


No Way Out But Through

by Roshwen



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Eventual OT3 if you squint and wear glasses, Excessive use of Cooking to Deal with Feelings, Excessive use of flashbacks, Fast and loose through Season 3, Gen, Happy Ending, Leverage Big Bang 2018, Lots of Angst, Until we get to Emotional Hurt/Comfort at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-29 03:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: Eliot knew this Breaking Nate Out of Jail job went too smooth, too smooth from the start. That is why he is not surprised to find a mysterious Italian Lady at the HQ that used to be Nate's apartment, but he is not too worried. His team is the best; whatever this chick has in store for them, he is sure that they can handle it.Until Nate comes back and drops eight words that clatter on to the table like so many bullets: ‘She wants us to go after Damien Moreau.’And Eliot's world grinds to a screeching halt.





	1. Setting the scene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we begin, a HUGE shoutout to my fantastic beta [Babylonsfall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabylonsFall), without whomst this thing would be a whole lot shorter and riddled with a whole lot more errors. Thank you so much dear and I am looking forward to what you are cooking!

The moment they walk into the HQ that used to be Nate’s apartment, Eliot stops. He can vaguely hear Nate bitching about Hardison taking over his place, and Hardison yammering on about how and where and how long they are going to scatter, something about France and Paris and Uruguay, while Sophie is trying to talk Parker out of using the planned downtime to go and try to steal that Faberge egg off of Sterling (of which Eliot doesn’t exactly disapprove, but she should know better than go about it alone by now), but all that is drowned out by the very finely tuned alarm bells that he has developed over the years.

The alarm bells that are clanging, loud and clear.

_Somebody’s here. Hiding. Upstairs._

He can’t say for sure what tips him off. There’s nothing that has been disturbed. All their stuff is still where it belongs. There are no marks on the floor. There is no sign of a break in on the door or the windows. Everything is exactly the way they left it before they went down to Rockford. Then he takes a step forward, towards the spiral staircase in the center of Nate’s apartment and a faint, but still very distinctive whiff of stale cigarette smoke hits his nose.

He stops again, all his senses on full alert now. And now that he knows, he can hear it, too. That deep silence upstairs that comes, not from no one being there, but from someone being there and trying very hard to be quiet.

Eliot turns around. Time slows down as he scans the room again for any sign of breaching. Whoever it is, they’re good. They’ve managed to bypass all of Hardison’s security and if it hadn’t been for the lingering smell of smoke, Eliot would have had nothing else to go on but his gut.

His gut is good. It has kept him alive for twenty-odd years by now.

But none of them smoke. Hardison has ‘asthmatic tendencies’, Nate has a kid that died of lung cancer, Sophie once told him that the smoking femme fatale was only a thing in the fifties, Parker jumps off of buildings when she needs to relax and Eliot likes to be able to breathe while he’s fighting.

So none of them smoke. And yet there it is, the dark and unpleasant tang of tobacco still hanging in the air.

Eliot sniffs again, and narrows his eyes.

Whoever it is that has found their way in here, they know how to dodge the best alarm system on the planet. But cigarette smoke clings, even after you have put your cigarette out hours ago, and that tells him that this is no professional intruder. Which is another thing that makes the hairs in Eliot’s neck stand on end. Because this Breaking Nate Out of Jail job has gone too smooth, too smooth from the start and if there is one thing that Eliot knows, it’s that _nothing_ ever goes this smooth without things turning out to be a massive…

He starts making his way to the spiral staircase again, faster now than before. Hardison and Nate are walking towards the door. Hardison hands Nate his train tickets, still talking a mile a minute while Nate is still trying to get a word in edgewise. Hardison opens the door.

… trap.

The dozen guys with guns in the hallway aren’t the problem. Eliot has already turned around and started charging at them, ready to take them out one by one before Nate stops him and the _real_ problem presents itself, in the clicking of high heels on a metal staircase and a sultry voice.

‘Buona sera, signore Ford.’

\---

‘Hardison.’

‘Look man, I don’t know. I don’t know who she is, I don’t know how she got in here, I _don’t know._ She didn’t register on the cameras, not on the motion sensors, she even got past Parker’s laser grid and there’s _nothing_ about skeevy Italian chicks in any law enforcement agencies that might be interested in us. If they’d be able to find us. Which they shouldn’t be, ‘cause I buried us _good._ Look, when Nate comes back, I’ll start tracking her down and then I’ll give you her entire autobiography from her happy childhood in the hills of Tuscany until the moment she decided to start hanging out in Nate’s bedroom, but right now, I ain’t got nothing. _’_

‘ _If_ Nate comes back.’

‘Thanks, Parker. That’s… that’s really helpful. Yeah. Thank you.’

Eliot says nothing. He retreats, quietly, to a spot where he can watch all the possible entrances and exits into the apartment (there’s seven. Nine if you’re Parker) and waits, trying to ignore the chill that is slowly crawling its way up his spine.

He doesn’t have the faintest clue who the Italian chick is and he couldn’t care less. He doesn’t _need_ to know who she is; all that matters is that she is bad news and he doesn’t need Hardison digging holes into the internet to tell him that. Which is why he takes up position by the door, watching his team and trying to shake off the urge to grab them and bolt while they still can.

Hardison is still behind his laptop, bitching about creepy people hanging out in other people’s bedrooms. Parker is by turns commiserating with him and riling him up even further, and Eliot can’t help but notice that there is a lot less personal space between the two of them than there used to be. That could of course be Parker having no concept of boundaries again, but. From the way Hardison pauses his sarcasm-laden soliloquy for a moment to look up at her, Eliot suspects there might be something else brewing there.

The faintest hint of a smile flits over his face. Good for them.

Meanwhile, Sophie has disappeared into the kitchen because according to her, grifting as an American always makes her hungry. There is a crashing of pots and plates, and the opening and shutting of cupboard doors that tell Eliot she is definitely making a sizable dent into his pantry. He’ll have to check that before they leave, and add whatever she took to his grocery list for the week.

He doesn’t move from his spot to help her, though. Not until Nate enters the apartment again, carrying a red manila folder and a grave expression, and drops eight words that clatter on to the table like so many bullets.

‘She wants us to go after Damien Moreau.’

Eliot’s world grinds to a screeching halt.

It’s a good thing he is sitting at the back of the table, where no one is looking at him. They are all looking at Nate, who is in turn staring at the file like it is going to bite him. It might. But that’s good, that’s very good because if everyone is watching Nate and the file, then no one is watching Eliot. And there’s no one to see how his self-control slips, for the merest fraction of a second. His breath hitches, his hand closes around his beer bottle just a hair too tightly as the words sink in.

 _No,_ he thinks. The apartment around him tilts sideways for a moment, and he has to screw his eyes shut to fight a rising wave of nausea. _No. This can’t be how it ends._

‘Damien Moreau?’ he hears Sophie ask from miles away. She sounds incredulous but not half as scared as she should be. ‘Are you out of your mind? Nobody touches Moreau!’

The others chip in, each with their own variations on the theme of Damien Moreau, international crime lord. Even Eliot himself manages to object, somehow. He’s only half aware he is doing it and he can hear himself talking from a strange kind of distance as if it’s someone else sitting at the table and telling Nate that they are _not_ going after someone who moves money for just about every dirty regime in the world.

 _The Big Bad,_ Hardison calls him, sounding more impressed than scared. Like Moreau is the end boss in one of those stupid, _stupid_ video games Hardison likes to play and Eliot wants to laugh.

Nate looks back at them. Bemused, Eliot notices, swallowing back the hysteria and sagging into his seat. Bemused. Out of all the possible reactions to being tasked with bringing down _Damien Moreau_ , Nathan Ford is apparently going with ‘slightly inconvenienced’.

‘Guys,’ Nate says. ‘Guys. This is not a job.’

Eliot doesn’t even try to hide his groan of frustration and neither do the others. Because of course this is not a job. And he doesn’t even need Nate’s explanation about _why_ this is not a job, because he already knows how this works. He has been on both sides of the blackmailing game often enough and so have the others. But they still let Nate speak and it’s almost funny how Nate seems to think there’s a way out of this.

Like Moreau is just another mark that they can con and walk away from.

Like this is going to be like any other job, just with a different and more annoying client.

Like they aren’t all going to be dead in six months, one way or the other.

‘We can’t go straight at a guy like Moreau,’ he tries finally, when he thinks he can get some words out without screaming. ‘He’ll vaporize us.’

It’s meant to be a deterrent. It’s meant to make Nate understand, make the _team_ understand that if he, Eliot Spencer, thinks they can’t handle this, then maybe they should back off. Go away, hide, go after that Italian chick who thinks she can make them run rings around the roses, buy a farm and plant soybeans in West Virginia, do _anything_ but this.

He’s got at least three safe houses on every continent, and he knows for a fact that Hardison, Parker and Sophie have too. They could run. They _should_ run.

But Nate shrugs. Smiles. And tells him that he’s already got a plan. Tells him that they are going to continue on as normal, only in the meantime they will be working their way towards Moreau. Which is _so far_ from normal that it makes Eliot want to punch that smile right off his face. _Especially_ when Hardison grins too, that self-assured, cocky grin that is definitely going to get him killed someday (and Eliot does not want to think about how that day might just have come a whole lot closer) and tells them that he’s already got their next client lined up.

And that’s it. Nate nods and Hardison cheers and Eliot’s life is over.

\---

_‘Nice work, kid,’ the man tells him. Eliot doesn’t know his name. Just like he didn’t know the names of the three guys now lying in front of him, or the one guy floating in the water behind them._

_He steps back, shaking the rain out of his eyes. His boots sound hollow on the wood of the pier and the world around him is blue, a hazy color of water, sky and steel turning the disused harbor into something that almost looks pretty._

_The red on the pier is a bit of a contrast, though._

_‘Very nice work,’ the man repeats. He watches Eliot thoughtfully for a moment and then holds out his hand. ‘Give me your phone.’_

_The phone is a burner, so it’s no loss either way, but still. Eliot hesitates._

_The man rolls his eyes. ‘I’m gonna give it back to ya, boy. Give it here.’_

_Water laps underneath them as Eliot hands over his phone and watches like a hawk when the man starts punching buttons._

_‘If you ever need a job,’ the man says, handing the phone back. ‘Call that number. Ask for Damien and tell him Donny sent you. He’ll be happy to give you somethin’ to do.’_

_\---_

‘Eliot, wait.’

Eliot is already on the threshold on his way out of the apartment when Nate tells him to stop. He turns around to see Nate is still sitting at the head of the table, watching Eliot with narrowed eyes and for one moment, a nauseating realization sloshes through Eliot because how could Nate _not_ know.

He supposes he should be glad Nate didn’t come out and say anything before, when the others were around, but it’s obvious that the game is up. Nate knows who he is, what he did, and he is going to use that to get to Moreau. As he should, because it’s smart. It’s what Eliot would have done himself. If he had ever gotten it into his mind to go after Moreau in the first place, instead of putting as much distance as physically and humanly possible between the two of them.

Nate gets up and crosses the room. Eliot doesn’t say anything; he just watches Nate approach as coolly as he can, ignoring the half full glass of whiskey in Nate’s hand while he waits for the axe to drop.

But the look in Nate’s eyes… it isn’t right. It’s not the calculating look he has when he‘s working out his strategy. It’s also not the detached look he uses when he’s viewing the team as the pawns in his plan, and it’s not even the cold look you might give someone who has been the right hand man to an international crime lord for half a decade and who has somehow weaseled his way onto your team.

No. The look Nate gives him is worried. Shrewd blue eyes are filled with concern, and that is when it hits Eliot that Nate _doesn’t_ know. Even before Nate opens his mouth and starts talking, it takes all of Eliot’s considerable self-control to not stare at the man because _how_ could Nate not _know_.

‘I know you have reservations,’ Nate says. Gently, soothingly, as if they’re talking about buying a new car that might be a bit too expensive. Apparently not noticing the freight train realization that’s happening in front of him.

Eliot blinks. And breathes out. Listens as Nate continues: ‘And I know I can’t exactly say ‘trust me on this’ right now, but we really do need you on board. Or else we _will_ be vaporized.’

‘You don’t know shit about Moreau, Nate,’ Eliot manages to reply after a silence that drags on for far too long. His voice is low and tense, but thank god it is still rock steady. ‘You don’t know jack shit about him.’ _You don’t know jack shit about me._ ‘And you’re right. I don’t trust you.’ _And you should not be trusting me._ ‘But I’m in.’

Nate smiles, relieved. Claps him on the shoulder and Eliot has to work very hard not to wince. ‘No way out but through, huh?’

As he finally, finally leaves the apartment and makes his way home, through a city that is grey and cold all around, that phrase keeps revolving through Eliot’s head.

_No way out._

\---

 

So Nate doesn’t know. He knows nothing about Eliot, about Moreau, about Eliot’s history with Moreau and if Eliot has anything to say about it, that is going to stay that way for as long as possible.

Not indefinitely. He knows that that is too much to hope for. But he is going to need all the time he can get to come up with something _, anything_ before anybody finds out the truth.

So the first thing Eliot does when he gets to the bolt hole he calls home, is make a beeline for the kitchen and open up every single cupboard, pulling out pots, pans, knives, bowls and stirring spoons without prejudice. Leaving all this in a pile on the counter, he then blindly start tearing through the fridge and pantry until he has a pile of ingredients, some leftover, some new, some pulled out all the way from the back of the shelf.

He slams the fridge door shut. Takes a deep breath in, breathes out again, takes a step back and only then looks at what he’s got gathered on the countertop. Half a pound of beef, that’s good. Some carrots from his balcony garden, and onions, celery and some leftover mushrooms as well. They are on the verge of going slimy, still usable but he can’t leave them any longer. The cupboard has yielded a couple of rather sticky beef stock cubes, which will have to do for now because he has no time to make any himself, and some dusty tins of tomato puree. He always has garlic, thyme, parsley and other herbs, so those he gathers as well. Now if he still has some…

He turns back and starts rummaging through the shelf he calls his drinks cupboard. Bingo. At the back, there is a full bottle of red wine, and a half full bottle of cognac.

He knows something he can do with this. It will take time, but Eliot isn’t going anywhere.

Chopping everything up into more or less equal sized pieces centers him. The rhythmic chopping of his knife on the board is the only sound that matters, and it almost drowns out the roaring inside him at the unfairness of it all.

After the chopping comes the frying and the stirring, which requires focus because garlic will burn in ten seconds and that will ruin the entire dish if you don’t pay attention. So he stands close to the fire, spoon at the ready, watching the garlic and onion sizzle into the oil and butter before he adds the meat.

If he focuses enough on not burning the garlic or undercooking the beef, he does not have to think about anything else. It’s one of his classic avoidance tactics, cooking instead of thinking and he knows it.

He couldn’t care less.

About half an hour later, the heady, fragrant smell of Boeuf Bourguignon starts filling the tiny apartment. When he’s added the final ingredients, and given everything one final stir, Eliot finally turns the heat down and retreats to his living room, leaving everything to stew for the next two hours.

Avoidance tactic or not, the cooking has helped him to calm down. The initial panic has subsided, so now he sits down at the kitchen table and boots up his laptop. He has work to do.

He knows Hardison is doing the same thing. And he is _not_ going to think about what will happen if Hardison digs a little too deep, goes a little too far back, because if he starts thinking about that then he might just as well give up right now.

However. Hardison can dig deep, but he needs to find a lead first. He needs to know what to look for, where to start and where to follow from there to get anywhere near Moreau.

Eliot already knows where to start.

It helps that Hardison has taken the time and has had the considerable patience to teach him some basic hacking skills. It takes Eliot all of an hour to find the place where Moreau is currently hiding out and when he does, he almost laughs out loud because _come on._ Moreau _can’t_ really still be staying at the same hideout he used five years ago as if nothing has changed. To stay in one place for more than a year, even, would be the height of arrogance, the exact same overconfidence that has gotten so many criminal emperors busted or killed.

Moreau should know better than that. He _does_ know better than that and Eliot can’t for the life of him say whether he is impressed with his former boss’s sheer arrogance or frustrated with his incredible sloppiness.

 _An hour,_ he thinks, looking at the time. _An hour to find out you’re still in San Lorenzo. Damien, what the hell are you doing?_

He gets up, still shaking his head, and makes his way to the kitchen. The Boeuf Bourguignon is coming along nicely, but it still needs at least another hour, maybe hour and a half.

So after he has quickly put together some garlic flatbread to go with the stew later on, he pours himself one shot of cognac and heads back to his laptop. Because the villa at the Mediterranean coast, about 50 miles west of the Italian border, isn’t the only place he remembers.

Another hour later, Eliot shuts down his laptop.

He stiffly gets up from the chair. He makes his way over to the kitchen. The beef has all but melted in the pot, and he ladles himself a generous helping into a bowl. He breaks off a piece of flatbread, takes it back into the living room with him, and sets it down on the table.

He sits down. He eats, by turns with a spoon and by using pieces of bread to mop up any spills.

When he’s done, he wipes down the table. He takes the bowl and spoon back to the kitchen.

He ladles the leftover stew into a Tupperware and puts it in the freezer. He finds a ziploc bag for the leftover flatbread and puts it in the fridge; with some fresh tomatoes and goat cheese, it’ll make a good lunch tomorrow.

He does the dishes, and leaves it in the rack on the counter to dry off. He wipes the countertop. He ties up his trash bag and takes it with him to the front door, to be put out first thing in the morning.

He goes back into the kitchen and wipes the already spotless countertop. He checks the alarms in the kitchen and the living room. He locks and bolts his front door and the windows.

He turns off the lights.

He makes his way to the tiny bedroom. He doesn’t turn on the light. He methodically strips down to his boxers. He goes to the bathroom and he brushes his teeth, leaning against the sink with his back to the mirror. When he’s spat out the gob of toothpaste, he rinses. He spits again and then puts the toothbrush back into the cup.

He misses. The metal cup falls off the ledge and clatters into the sink, the sound echoing through the bathroom like gunfire.

He doesn’t pick it up.

He leaves the bathroom. He closes the door and collapses on to the bed.

It’s a good thing he can fall asleep on command. Even if it is just ninety minutes.

\---

_‘Eliot Spencer,’ a smooth voice at the other end repeats his name. ‘And how did you get this number, Eliot Spencer?’_

_‘Donny,’ Eliot says, clutching the phone a little tighter and fighting the urge to immediately hang up again._

_He didn’t want to call. He didn’t trust Donny as far as he could throw him (although that would have been pretty far, but that’s beside the point), but he’s out of options. He is out money, out of a job, he’s on the naughty list of three different cartels in three different countries and he hasn’t slept or eaten properly in three days. ‘Donny… Donny told me to. To call. Said you’d. You’d give me a job.’_

_‘Donny,’ the voice says. ‘It seems I need to have a word with Donny about giving out my personal phone number to strangers, wouldn’t you say? Eliot Spencer?’_

_Eliot shrugs. ‘I could have a word with him for you.’_

_A soft laugh sounds static in his ear. ‘Ah, I think I like you. Tell me, Eliot Spencer. What do you have to offer?’_

_Eliot knew this question was coming, but before he is halfway through the long list of things he can and will do, the voice stops him. ‘Bruisers and butchers I have, Eliot Spencer. Tell me something new. Something I could use.’_

_‘I can cook.’_

_Eliot doesn’t know why he says it, other than the fact that he’s exhausted to the bone and he has absolutely nothing left to lose. But it seems to be the right answer, because there is a long pause at the other end before:_

_‘Amsterdam Airport. The day after tomorrow, 12pm. One of my men will contact you with more details.’_

_And that’s how it starts._

\---

When Hardison calls him the following day, it’s not because of Moreau. It’s because of a kid who needs help against an overblown tech mogul who seems permanently stuck in the eighties, which is just pathetic.

It’s not the best time Eliot has ever had on a job; while everybody is having fun at the high school reunion (and he can hear over the comms after the job has wrapped up that at least Nate and Sophie are having fun, while Hardison and Parker are suspiciously quiet), he is left on his own, nursing a couple of new bruises courtesy of the Vezzarat.

But that’s okay. He doesn’t mind. He could use a bit of a distance between him and the team.

\---

_‘Have you ever been to Iran, Eliot?’ Damien asks._

_Eliot shakes his head. Afghanistan, yes. Iraq. Saudi Arabia. Kuwait. Israel. But not Iran._

_‘It’s a nice country,’ Damien continues. ‘Lovely people. Great culture. And you, my friend, simply must try this restaurant in Tabriz. The khoresh they have there is to die for.’_

_Eliot couldn’t care less. Escorting a shipment of heroin from Tehran to Tblisi and then across the Black Sea into the Ukraine, means he doesn’t get to connect much with the locals anyway. But it’s an easy gig, comparatively speaking, plus he manages to wrangle the khoresh recipe out of the tiny Iranian chef without much effort or threats of grievous bodily harm._

_So, all in all, things are not too bad, Eliot thinks as he stands at the back of the boat, watching the skyline of Odessa get closer and closer and blinking against the spray of water in his face. Not too bad at all._

_\---_

Apparently dismantling an electronic surveillance system that is used by evil governments is just a little warm-up for them to crack an actual fucking _Steranko_ because _someone_ still doesn’t know how to be part of a team (and it’s not even Nate this time).

But they do it. They go up against a security system that even has Hardison quaking in his sneakers and they make it out. With everybody still intact and with the threat of an artificial famine averted. And after they’ve done that, Eliot takes Parker aside during their after-case briefing. Just for a moment.

‘Parker, I want you to listen to me. Very carefully. Okay?’

‘Eliot, I already said I’m sorry.’

‘I know. But I’m still gonna tell you this, because I wanna make absolutely sure you get it. So.’

Blue eyes lock on to blue, both not giving in one inch. ‘If something like this happens again…’

‘I know! I know, I’ll call you. I won’t go off alone again and we’re a team and I know you’ve got my back.’

Parker looks mulish but also slightly abashed, so Eliot knows she at least sort of means it. Which is why he doesn’t press the point any further, but merely gives her a curt nod. ‘Good.’

He might not be able to protect her against everything, no matter how much he wants to. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try.

\---

Later that night, Eliot calls up an old acquaintance to call in a small, but long outstanding favor. ‘I don’t need details,’ he says. ‘No activities, no names. Just locations. That’s all.’

‘That’s _all?’_ the voice at the other end squeaks. ‘I got you fake papers to get out of Turkey man, I’m not sure this is comparable!’

‘Just do it,’ Eliot growls, and he’s not pleading. Eliot Spencer does not plead. ‘If it helps, I’ll owe you again for this.’

‘Yeah, and Damien will have my head for this,’ the other end protests, but it’s grumbling, without much fire, so Eliot doesn’t respond. He just flips the phone shut.

Two days later, his phone pings with a message. _Paris. Hotel de Crillon._

\---

Eliot didn’t know Hardison played the violin. To be honest, he wouldn’t have put it past the man, but still. Busting out a solo like that, without any previous practice while Hardison told them that yes, he could play but he hadn’t done so in years and he was desperately out of practice? That stinks.

So, when he is sure everybody else has left, Eliot returns to McRory’s bar, where he finds Nate nursing a glass of whiskey all by himself.

‘Nate, a word?’

Nate looks up, looking for all the world like his usual unbothered self. ‘Sure.’

Eliot waits a moment, to make absolutely sure he has Nate’s full attention. ‘If you ever. _Ever._ Pull something like that again.’

‘Eliot…’

‘No. if. You. Ever. Pull. Something. Like. That. Again. You will go up against the next mark on your own. Do you understand? I ain’t gonna work with someone who messes with people’s heads, and if I go, I _will_ take Hardison with me. And good luck getting’ Parker to stay on board if that happens.’

Nate glares, obstinate like a kid who knows he’s in the wrong but who is still going to stick with whatever he’s done. ‘Eliot, you of all people, should know that sometimes you have to…’

‘You could’ve asked him, Nate.’

The words are soft, but the blow they deliver isn’t. Nate sinks back into his chair, still glaring but without a cutting comeback. Eliot meets his glare full on, and when Nate finally rolls his eyes in defeat, gives a curt nod and leaves the bar without another word.

\---

_The first six months are… oddly quiet. Damien gives him plenty to do, but it’s all low-stakes, low priority jobs that don’t require much effort._

_Eliot doesn’t mind; he knows it’s just an onboarding period. He knows he’s being tested to make sure he’s good, make sure Damien can count on him before he is moved on to bigger jobs. And that’s fine. The past years have been full of excitement, and the future will probably be as well; he can do with a bit of boredom in between._

_So he escorts shipments, people, Damien himself to their destinations all over the globe. He stands guard, he stakes out, he beats up people who need to be beaten up and he talks to people who need a talking to._

_It’s not the most inspiring work, but it will do for now._

\---

During the next job, Eliot tries to keep a close eye on Nate, who seems to be spiraling into unsafe territory again. But there’s also a hot FDA agent he gets to fake date so the close eye becomes more like half an eye. And anyway, this time the only one in real danger is Nate himself and Sophie seems to have him covered, so Eliot can go and walk the Freedom Trail with Jennifer Pearson (both literally and metaphorically) as much as he likes.

He firmly ignores the message he gets halfway through, because Nate is in _just_ a self-destructive enough mood to go and try something stupid if he only knew that Moreau was this close.

_New York. The Penthouse._

For five whole minutes after he reads the message, Eliot contemplates a very simple solution to their problem.

New York isn’t even two hours away. And he knows at least three places he can get a sniper rifle without questions attached within ten miles of the Penthouse on the Upper East Side.

He could do it. Is probably the only one in the world who could even come close enough to try and walk away afterwards. But that simple solution would grow incredibly complicated incredibly quickly. Anyway, that is not the way he wants things to end. Not yet.

He can come up with something better. He only needs a bit more time.

\---

_‘You have a month,’ Damien tells him._

_Eliot looks at him, then back at the file he’s just been handed. The assignment is easy enough in itself. A Mr. Nguyen has become a complication rather than an asset, and Damien has no patience for complications._

_It’s nothing Eliot hasn’t done before. He just didn’t think he’d have to do it again._

_‘Any questions?’ Damien asks when he’s been silent for almost a minute. It sounds friendly but there’s venom underneath so Eliot shakes his head. ‘See you in a month.’_

_Damien smiles. ‘Good boy, Spencer. Mark will get you to Ho Chi Minh, and please. Do try the pho when you’re there.’_

_\---_

It’s funny how the best job he’s ever done is almost immediately followed by one of the worst jobs he’s ever done.

One week he is playing guitar in front of an adoring crowd, just like he thought of maybe doing someday when he was sixteen. He’s also getting it on with their client, which he knows he’s not exactly supposed to but in his defense, she kind of started it. And there’s people chasing him but they’re not chasing him because of the usual reasons, they’re chasing him because they actually like him? Which is all kinds of weird and a bit not good given all the bounties on his head, but Eliot would be lying through his teeth if he didn’t leave Tennessee with a spring in his step that hasn’t been there for quite some time now.

Hardison notices, of course. Hardison notices a lot of things. But once the usual ribbing of _ha ha I made Eliot accidentally famous again_ is over, Hardison comes up to him with a bottle of orange soda in his hand and a grin on his face.

‘You know,’ he tells Eliot, ‘I got no idea if playing violin and guitar together would sound good. But you’n me, we should jam together sometime. ‘Cause that didn’t sound bad at all.’

Eliot smiles back and tips his beer bottle towards the orange soda. ‘Yeah, good idea.’

He’s not lying: he would like to get his guitar out more often. And he’s definitely going to take Hardison up on that offer, if they’re not all dead in three months.

Correction: if they’re not all dead _next week,_ because before Eliot knows it, he is handcuffed to Hardison and running through the woods. All because some people decided to do some freedom fighting. And of course he doesn’t need Hardison to tell him that this is a ‘black thing’ because Eliot has damn well seen who those guns were pointed at first and it wasn’t him.

And then, to make matters even worse, the moment they have a shot of getting out of there (because say what you will about Nathan Ford, the man stole them a fucking _train_ and at that moment, Eliot has already forgiven any and all crimes Nate has committed or might commit in the near future), Hardison decides to grow some courage.

‘Maybe they make it, maybe they don’t,’ Hardison snaps, dark eyes flashing without a trace of their usual laughter. ‘And what happens then?’

Eliot glares back because he knows Hardison is right. If they don’t go back and stop these guys, no one else is going to be in time to try.

 _What happens then is that you die,_ he thinks, but does not say. Instead he gets out a hatchet, makes a lame joke and chops off the handcuffs before they head into the woods again.

(And if Eliot is honest? He can also forgive Hardison for wanting to stay indoors for the next couple of days. Even though fishing on a computer is _not_ the same.)

\---

The next two jobs pass by in a blur. All he remembers are cars and something about Nate’s father, which tells him _so much_ more about Nathan Ford than he ever wanted to know. But he’s not really paying attention, not the way he usually would have.

He is too busy trying not to panic.

Because they are well over three months into their allocated time, and they haven’t found a single lead on Moreau yet.

At least, _Hardison_ has not found a single lead on Moreau yet. Eliot has a whole string of locations, and if he lines up those locations with the news reports he knows to look out for, they tell a pretty intriguing story.

You know, if you’re into the bloody thriller type of crime fiction.

_Hitherto unknown antiques discovered at auction in Seoul._

_Three dead in supposed terror attack in Amsterdam_

_Ruling party projected to win federal elections in Russia_

_Police powerless against new wave of heroin shipments hitting US soil_

They have sent Nate’s father off on his way to Galway. Now, it’s late at night and Eliot is in his kitchen, staring at a frying pan, half a pack of rice, some frozen shrimp and a bulb of fennel that has some brown spots, but is otherwise still good. Some more rummaging through the pantry gets him an onion, some garlic and a jar of vegetable stock powder (he really should set aside some time to make some fresh stock and freeze it for later use), and he’s ready to start.

Risotto is tricky. It requires constant focus, constant stirring and you absolutely cannot let your mind wander because before you know it, the rice is burnt, the vegetables are still raw and you can throw the whole thing out.

It’s just what Eliot needs right now. He breathes in the soothing anise scent of the diced fennel as he cooks it until just barely done and then watches the rice soak up the liquid he ladles in, bit by bit, stirring ever so carefully with one hand while he keeps the other one on the nob to turn the fire up and down as necessary. Making sure his food turns out right takes immediate priority over anything else, even blackmailing Italians and international crime lords who happen to be his ex-boss.

The only light in the kitchen is the range hood overhead and the fire underneath the pot. The only sound is the soft bubbling of the boiling rice and the occasional scraping of the spoon when the stock has been soaked up and it’s time for another ladleful. It’s a perfectly quiet picture, and to an outsider, it almost looks peaceful.

The risotto is almost done. The only thing left to add is half a ladle of vegetable stock and half a ladle of white wine to deepen the flavor, and then Eliot can stir in the shrimp that have been waiting patiently in a bowl after having been cooked first. He has some parmesan cheese in the fridge as well, so he gets that out and starts grating it. With a lot more force than necessary, even though parmesan _is_ a tough son of a bitch. He might need to find something to do with the leftover cheese tomorrow because if he tosses the entire block into his risotto, then he might as well not have bothered.

The cheese is done, and the grate clatters into the sink. The bowl of shrimp bumps against the pot with the rice as he scoops them out and stirs them in and he is only just in time to put it back on the counter before he drops it.

Cooking time is over. Time to get back to work.

\---

_‘Well done,’ Damien tells him when Eliot has finished his briefing. ‘Very well done.’_

_Eliot doesn’t reply. He already knows he did well. It’s why Damien sent him to Berlin in the first place._

_‘Any heat on you?’ Damien asks, as if he doesn’t know the answer already._

_Eliot shakes his head. ‘Nah. I think one of his bodyguards saw me, but.’ He shrugs._

_Damien nods. ‘Good. Take some time off, then report back to me in… well, let’s say two weeks? I think I’ll have someone else lined up for you by then.’_

_It’s not that Eliot_ likes _taking out rich bastards who have gotten on Damien’s bad side, but he still quirks a smile. ‘Will do.’_

_\---_

Eliot doesn’t do metaphors, as a rule. But being stuck underground, in a narrow, dark, dank tunnel that can collapse at any moment, and where he quickly loses sight of the exit? That hits a little close to home at the moment.

Through his earpiece, he can hear Hardison crack jokes, Nate being a selfish prick (both in character and out of it) and most of all, he can hear Parker becoming a very convincing Bubbly Becky. Which would have terrified him a lot more if it hadn’t been for the fact that they’re now _four_ months in and he has heard Nate say the name Moreau exactly once.

They are running out of time. He is not sure Nate has even the beginnings of a plan, Moreau is in San Lorenzo where he always goes if he’s planning something big and Eliot is in the middle of fucking nowhere, three fucking miles underground doing fucking nothing but cover fucking rocks in fucking rock dust.

He might be starting to panic. Just a little.

And not even spending a night at the bar, discovering that _holy fucking shit they really all went after the same fucking dagger five years ago without spotting each other_ can help that.

(Although seeing Sophie’s face when he decides to mess with her, just a little bit, and makes her accent come out a _tad_ more cockney than it actually is… worth it. Abso-fucking-lutely worth it. _Especially_ when Hardison and Parker join in as well, although he does need to have a stern word with Hardison afterwards. Because him and Sophie? Did _not_ happen. Eliot’s sure of that.) (Well, mostly. Mostly sure. He thinks.)

\---

On the plus side of that night, Nate has apparently remembered they are supposed to be finding Moreau.

On the down side, Nate has apparently remembered they are supposed to be finding Moreau.

And Eliot still has no way out.

\---

Hardison does, however. Because two days later, he comes flying into Nate’s apartment, crowing about a British bastard who smuggles antiquities from the Middle East and who is flying into Boston next week. It seems the hunt is finally on.

The moment Hardison starts his briefing and the smug face of John Keller fills the TV wall, Eliot almost bursts out laughing. Because out of all of Moreau’s possible cronies they could have gone after, Hardison has managed to find the one slimy weasel that Eliot knows for a fact A) isn’t called John, much less Keller, B) has more buttons and levers than your average arcade game so that even Eliot could con him blindfolded and with one arm tied behind his back and C) will give in when you glare at him a little too hard.

If this is how Nate is going to play it, Eliot thinks with a brief burst of relief, maybe this is going to work out after all.

He wonders if he should tell them what he knows. He could make it sound believable, like he ‘met’ Keller (yeah, right) once or was ‘hired’ by him for a job, and it would make this entire con so much easier. But then Hardison might start looking into things.  And Hardison is already digging deep enough that it is making Eliot twitch. So, maybe not.

Still. When they walk into Logan Airport and they take up positions, Eliot can’t help feeling rather upbeat about this job.

Until he sees the girl.

And he remembers.

\---

_‘Kids,’ Eliot says flatly. ‘He’s using kids?’_

_‘A bit medieval, I know,’ Damien says, reaching out to take the martini that is being handed to him by a servant. He raises his sunglasses and looks at Eliot, who is standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight on the patio. ‘But it is clever. They are easy to get a hold of, easy to, ah, convince and their bags are hardly ever searched. Rather a devious little scamp, our Seamus Kelly.’_

Devious _is not the word Eliot would use, exactly. But when Damien tasks him with escorting Kelly from his ‘castle’ (an overblown, overdecorated mansion in Hertfordshire) to Cairo, he manages to refrain from punching the guy in the face all the same. He might be a weasel but he’s Damien’s weasel and as such, he is part of the crew. And maybe you don’t agree with their methods, but crew is crew._

_Crew is crew._

\---

The rest of the job runs rather smoothly, or as smoothly as things ever go for them. They do find out Sophie might or might not be a princess, which does not surprise Eliot in the least but which has Parker bouncing all over the place firing off excited question after excited question. ‘Did you live in a castle? Were there dragons? Were you going to marry a prince?’

Sophie laughs and tells Parker yes, no, and maybe but no. Eliot, hanging off to the side, grins and shakes his head. He would like to know more, is _dying_ to know more, but then again. He is hardly the person to go prying into other people’s secret pasts.

He takes the rest of the afternoon to hunt down Hardison’s supplies, even though he knows his way around London well enough that he could have done it in half the time if he wanted to. Eliot used to have London as one of his default lie-low cities for whenever the heat got a little too close; he knows where to get walnut oil and goat marrow and a bucket of soot easily enough.

Being back in London is nice, he thinks as he makes his way across the London Bridge towards Leadenhall Market. He likes the city. It’s big, it’s loud, it’s grey and grimy at times, but there’s still a down to earth feel to it wherever you go and the block of cheddar he finds at the market a little later on almost brings him to his knees with joy. He gets a pound of bacon and a bag of potatoes as well, and that will be dinner for tonight. At least, if he can pry Hardison away from whatever mad genius work he is creating at the moment.

Groceries done, he then takes the time to check out a couple of old hideouts, reconnect with one or two ‘acquaintances’ and put some careful feelers out. Because they are getting in deeper and deeper and he needs all the intel he can get before it’s either swimming or drowning.

Because playing tourist and thinking about baked potatoes with cheddar and bacon is nice. Playing princess and conning a would-be aristocrat is even better. But while they are gallivanting about London, there is a scared little girl sitting alone in a holding cell. And as far as Eliot is concerned, Moreau’s entire organization is going down for that alone.

\---

_New York. The Penthouse._

_DC. The Hilton_

_LA. The Malibu Condo._

_New York_

_LA_

_DC_

_New York_

_DC_

_DC_

_LA_

_These are all of Moreau’s last known locations._

_Eliot looks at the string of texts. Then looks at his laptop._

_There is a steaming bowl of chili con carne standing next to him. He ignores it. Just like he ignores the way his hand is trembling while he clicks through to the next news report:_

_District of Columbia -- Junior DOD official and fiancée killed in car crash._

_Whatever Moreau is planning, it is obviously going to happen here, in the States. On Eliot’s home turf. Which could be good news, or it could turn out to be catastrophic._

_It might be both. Eliot has a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be long until he finds out._

_\---_

Eliot doesn’t know Mark Vector. Or, to rephrase that, he knows Mark Vector the hockey player. He just didn’t know the guy was on Damien’s payroll.

He fits, though. He’s just as much of a slimy weasel as Keller, only this time without the layer of carefully cultivated class. Both Keller and Vector act tough, like they’re the biggest baddest boy around but in reality, they are desperate for someone more powerful to tell them what to do. They like to be led, like a couple of blithering sheep running exactly where their owner wants them to go.

Eliot used to be a pretty good sheepdog and he knows one of Moreau’s flock when he sees one. Although it seems that Mark Vector has even less brains than your usual sheep, because _jesus,_ Parker’s grifting is as transparent as a freshly washed window.

Don’t get Eliot wrong: for Parker, it is excellent grifting. But she’s no Sophie, and that bit of ‘flirting’ would have sent anyone with more than three brain cells running for the exit. Apparently all that enforcing and getting knocked on the head could do some real damage. Who knew.

The rest of the con is a bit of a blur.

Later that night, he remembers playing buddy cop with Hardison. Wrestling a baseball bat away from a hysteric lady. Some random dude being way more terrified than he had any right to be. Parker making a terrifyingly good dead hooker and Hardison making a face whenever he looked at it through the security cam they set up in Nate’s bedroom, just to be sure (‘Yes, Nate, I’ll remove it when we’re done. Trust me. No one wants to know what you get up to in there, least of all me.’)

All of this he remembers vaguely, because then there are cops in the bar and bullets tearing through Nate’s apartment while Nate and Sophie are up there and Eliot isn’t and things go _wrong._

\---

The cops are easily enough to deal with. Even with gunshots ringing in his ear, it takes Eliot all of twenty seconds to wipe the floor with them and get his ass out of the bar and into the building across the street.

The sight there is so familiar that he has to stand still for a moment, taking all of it in, before he lands back into reality and tells Nate that this guy definitely works for Moreau because that’s how he does things. And no, he does not tell Nate that this is exactly how _he_ did things. Except for the fact that he used to be a good deal more effective and would not have wasted more bullets than he absolutely had to. Which for this job, would have been three. No more, no less.

It seems the quality of Moreau’s liability removers has gone downhill since he left. The thought almost makes him giddy as he runs back down to where Hardison is waiting next to the cop car. The fucking _cop car_ and that’s another thing that makes a bubble of hysterical laughter rise up in Eliot’s throat because they are two of the most wanted criminals on the _planet_ and they are touring around Boston in a fucking _cop car._

‘So you do like it,’ Hardison grins at him when he sees Eliot’s face and mistakes it for the happy grin it isn’t. ‘Told ya! Told ya you’d like this!’

And he hops behind the wheel before Eliot has the chance to tell him that this isn’t exactly the good kind of giddiness. It’s more like the kind you get after you get out alive after a house fire and you start laughing because when you’re laughing about a fireman’s helmet sitting askew, you don’t have to think about your house burning down in the background.

They get to the courthouse.

The look on Vector’s face when he sees Parker is priceless, and the way he stands up and starts yelling like a madman even more so. Eliot is standing in the doorway with Hardison, just in case Vector decides to make a break for it and then Vector _does_ make a break for it. Hardison is the first to grab him, but Eliot is the one who gets his arm around Vector’s throat and his mouth next to his ear.

Mark Vector is strong and about twice Eliot’s size but right now, that does not matter. Because right now, all that matters is that Eliot has Mark Vector in an arm lock and at the end of the day, it’s just inevitable. At the end of _this_ day in particular, it’s just inevitable that he has one of Moreau’s sheep in an arm lock, like he used to.

And from the deep, dark part of his brain the words come out. Like they used to.

\---

_‘Mr. Moreau would like to speak with you.’_

_He must have said it a thousand times. Thousands of times. To all kinds of people in all kinds of places. From office buildings to sprawling villas, from bedrooms to boarding gates, from decrepit warehouses to the penthouse of a luxury hotel in Dubai._

_He said it to portly businessmen. To politicians who thought they were just playing a game without realizing they were the pawns. To thugs and cartel kings, to princes and paupers and, on one particularly memorable occasion, to an actual queen._

_And no matter where. No matter who._

_Those words never failed to get him their full attention._

\---

He can’t believe no one heard it. He can’t believe no one picked up on it, that at no point during that night’s celebration at the bar, or during the cleaning up of Nate’s apartment, or during the wrap-up meeting the next day, no one comes up to him and asks: ‘Hey, what was that about?’

He doesn’t know what he would have done if they had, but still. These are four of the most observant people on the planet. _Someone_ should have noticed.

And he’s not sure he should be this happy no one did.

\---

They take a bit of a break after that, during which he has to play Santa for some reason. Wearing the costume, putting on the beard, sitting on a chair while listening to kids telling him about all the toys they want their parents to buy them. While Parker cheers and Hardison laughs his ass off (and is recording everything for posterity. Eliot can be sure of that).

He can’t help but feel like he would have enjoyed that a lot more if they weren’t in such knee-deep shit by now.


	2. Fanning the flames

And suddenly, Nate has a plan.

It’s either that or their time is up and Nate has decided ‘let’s just roll with this because there’s no time for anything else’. Eliot doesn’t know which of those is more terrifying but it’s something. It’s more than they have done until this point.

So when Hardison tells them that they are going to Virginia, where they have to kidnap a junior researcher before someone blows her up, Eliot sits himself down behind the briefing table and tries to pay attention. Parker plops down next to him, Nate says ‘Hardison, run it’, Hardison launches into his usual spiel of client, mark and possible ways in, and it looks like this is going to be business as usual.

Except Yasmin’s boss is General Elias Atherton. And Eliot _knows_ Elias Atherton.

And even worse, he knows who Atherton works for. Who Atherton has worked for for years, and who got him that cushy position at the DoD.

He doesn’t mention this during Hardison’s briefing, of course. In fact, he doesn’t say much at all. He just looks straight ahead at the screen and ignores the jokes Hardison cracks in between the intel about how Atherton looks like the epitome of a secret black ops douchebag.

His phone buzzes. He wants to ignore it, but his finger slides the screen on autopilot.

_DC. Crowne Plaza._

The apartment around him becomes grey and distant for a moment, as if swallowed by a sudden fog. Because if they are going after Elias Atherton and Moreau is in DC, then.

His time is up.

And he still doesn’t have a way out.

‘Uhm. Hey. Excuse me, Mr. Distinctive over there, I don’t wanna play the mean teacher man but if there’s something on your phone that’s more interesting than my _very_ detailed and intricate presentation that took a _lot_ of work, I think you should share it with the rest of the class.’

With a jolt, the apartment comes back into focus. Eliot looks up to glare at Hardison. ‘No.’

And puts the phone away. Hardison tries to glare back, but is reminded by Nate that they are on a schedule here, so if they could please? Continue?

Hardison rolls his eyes and starts describing Yasmin’s work in as much detail as he could wrangle from the DoD servers, while Eliot tries to pretend that the ground beneath his feet is still rock steady.

He must be slipping a little. Because a couple of minutes later, he has to shake off a shawl that Parker is trying to put over his shoulders. ‘What the hell?’ he growls, while swatting at the pink tassels that are suddenly draped over his arm.

‘You were shivering!’ Parker says, scowling. ‘You’re cold. This is warm. I’m helping.’

‘Was not,’ Eliot grumbles, giving Parker his best death glare before Nate threatens to come sit between them if they can’t behave and could they _please_ just focus for _five minutes?_

Eliot nods and returns his attention to an impatiently waiting Hardison. When Parker sneaks the shawl back on his shoulders again five minutes later, he doesn’t try to shake it off.

\---

 ‘You’re keeping tabs on Moreau?’ Sophie asks, incredulously.

They are back from Virginia, one alive but shaken junior DoD researcher sitting between them, and Eliot might have just inadvertently told everybody he knows where Moreau is hiding out. Whoops.

_Yes I’ve been keeping tabs on Moreau. I’ve been keeping tabs on him for six months, thank you for noticing. And got jack shit to show for it, too._

Eliot does not say that. ‘I make it a priority to know where Moreau is at all times,’ he replies darkly, ‘so we can avoid him.’

It sounds good. It sounds plausible. It isn’t even entirely a lie and Eliot reaches for his beer to hide the fact his hand is not shaking.

‘Hey, man, you cool?’ Hardison asks. His voice is low and worried and cuts Eliot like a knife.

_I’m so far from cool it’s not even funny._

Eliot does not say that either. Although for a split second he considers coming clean right then and there. Spill everything he knows about Moreau, get it off his chest and lay it down on the rickety table in McRory’s bar. But he doesn’t, because there is a time and a place for coming clean and that is _not_ in the middle of a thief bar right before they’re about to hit the biggest and most dangerous target any of them have ever faced.

He takes a breath. ‘Nate, me and Hardison will hit Moreau.’

\---

It’s stupid. It’s dangerous and selfish and borderline suicidal to take Hardison with him to Moreau but as far as Eliot is concerned, the alternatives are even worse. Because the alternatives are either Nate (no), Sophie (jesus no), Hardison on his own ( _jesus_ no) or Eliot on his own.

And Eliot has done a lot of things. A lot of things he’s not proud of, and a lot of things that would scare the shit out of any sane, mortal human being.

But he is not going to face Damien Moreau for the first time in five years on his own.

\---

Hardison is yammering on about some kind of plan, something about a middleman and a bodyguard and at any other time, Eliot would have gone along with it because The Middleman and The Bodyguard is a solid strategy.

At the moment, however, Eliot is a little busy focusing on their surroundings because the fog that consumed Nate’s apartment earlier is also swallowing the marble and gilt of the luxury hotel they just walked into. All the colors look dull and washed out and the soft classical hotel music sounds tinny and too loud as they make their way down to the elevator.

While walking down the stairs, Eliot is also fighting off a growing sense of déjà vu. All of this feels entirely too familiar: the hotel, the party down at the pool, even the goons at the elevator look exactly the same as they did five years ago. Although Eliot is pretty sure that, given the turnover rate of Moreau’s goons, these are entirely different goons than the ones he used to know.

The only thing keeping him in the present, keeping his mind from falling back into the way things were five years ago, is Hardison. Which is exactly the point of Hardison being there, and which is why Eliot is never going to forgive himself when this goes south.

The goons stop them. And there are a couple of ways they can gain entry into the elevator, but all of them are risky and at least one of them involves several unconscious or dead bodies to clean up.

So Eliot chooses. And chooses the one thing that has always gotten him entry anytime, anywhere, without issue.

The goons step aside. The elevator doors open.

Down they go.

\---

_‘I’m Eliot,’ he tells Damien over the phone that first time he calls. ‘Eliot Spencer.’_

_‘Eliot Spencer,’ Damien repeats. ‘Hm. I like it.’_

_\---_

_‘Name’s Eliot,’ he tells the blubbering mess of a man in front of him. ‘Eliot Spencer. I work for Mr. Moreau.’_

_The man says nothing, but the sudden wet spot in his trousers speaks for itself._

_\---_

_‘Nice to meet you,’ he greets the dolled up mob queen who thought she was going out on a date. ‘I’m Eliot. Eliot Spencer.’_

_The mob queen’s purse lands on the pavement with a thud. As does the mob queen herself a moment later._

_\---_

_‘Eliot Spencer,’ he tells the ex-insurance cop who is going to lead this new job. ‘Pleasure.’_

_‘Pleasure,’ Nate Ford replies, shaking his hand. But the look in his eyes is wary, and Eliot can’t help but feeling a little satisfied._

_\---_

The air in the pool is sweltering, heavy with the sharp tang of chlorine and alcohol. It makes Eliot’s nose itch and the chatter of Moreau’s Models, as he used to call them, sets his teeth on edge even more.

Having Hardison next to him, confused, worried and scared, and repeating the question _why did you tell him your real name, Eliot_ over and over again, does not help.

Neither do the guns that are pulled on them the moment they round the pool.

The Models scream and run. Eliot stays put. ‘Stay close,’ he mutters to Hardison, who suddenly seems to realize the amount of shit they’re in and has become uncharacteristically meek for the moment.

Then Eliot spots the man who is walking towards them and he almost laughs. Because out of all his people, the one person who Moreau promoted to right hand man after Eliot left, is:

‘Chapman.’

‘Eliot.’

‘They give you the job?’ It’s a sneer. It’s _meant_ as a sneer, because Chapman is a goddamn _punk_ who’d check if a gun was loaded by looking down the barrel and pulling the trigger.

‘There was an opening,’ Chapman sneers back. And yeah, there sure was, but Damien must have been pretty desperate if he’s having _Chapman_ as his sheepdog. Before Eliot can tell him that, however, a door at the other end of the pool opens and an all too familiar voice says: ‘That’s no way to treat an old friend.’

The rest of the pool fades away. Five years vanish into thin air as Eliot turns and looks around, into a pair of smiling dark eyes.

_Well, he hasn’t fucking changed._

Chapman falls silent. Hardison goes rigid. The water in the pool behind them laps at the edges as the goons put their guns away and step back.

Eliot nods. ‘Damien.’

\---

_That first day, when Eliot steps out of the gate and into the Arrivals terminal of Amsterdam Airport, he spots the man immediately. He is hanging off to the side in an ill-fitting suit, unkempt black hair, yawning and looking over the crowd with dark eyes like their mere existence deeply bores him. He also completely ignores Eliot, who pauses for a moment, hoists his duffel bag a little higher over his shoulder and makes his way over._

_The man does not look up, not even when Eliot is standing right next to him. He only spares Eliot a glance when Eliot smiles and tells him ‘I believe we have an appointment?’_

_The man narrows his eyes for a moment and looks away again. ‘12pm on the dot. Good.’ He turns around and for the first time, a shark-like smile flits over his impassive face. ‘I like a man who’s punctual.’_

Then you and I are going to get along great, _Eliot thinks and he puts down the duffel bag and holds out his hand. ‘Eliot Spencer. And you must be Damien.’_

\---

The upside is, that Eliot is now laser-focused again. The fog is gone and everything, from the number of goons still in the room, to the sound of Moreau’s Models milling and chattering behind the closed doors, to the one remaining Model offering him a glass of wine, is suddenly displayed in razor-sharp Ultra HD. Even the way Moreau says ‘He prefers beer,’ is as clear as a church bell.

The downside is that Hardison is sitting next to him, upset and betrayed, which is dangerous, and also handcuffed to a chair, which is even worse.

And that is the _good_ part of the meeting. Ten seconds later, Hardison is no longer next to Eliot, but instead he’s at the bottom of the pool, still handcuffed to that chair and unable to get to the surface on his own. There is no way for Eliot to get to him without getting them both killed, so he doesn’t even try. He doesn’t think about the kind of person that makes him, because he already knows. He also does not think about the team. He does not think about going back to McRory’s pub alone, he does not think about telling Nate, Sophie, Parker, fucking _Parker_ that he got the one person killed they absolutely definitely need.

He does not think about how this is the way things will end for all of them.

He doesn’t think. Instead he looks Damien in the eye, and, while firmly ignoring the splashing and thrashing in the pool behind him, he closes the deal they came here to make.

He should have known. Damien never takes the first offer that is presented to him.

\---

Hardison is the smartest man Eliot knows. Because Eliot would not have thought to lower the chair and use the air to buy himself more time, and he also would not have thought Hardison could keep his cool enough to climb out of the pool, wipe himself down with a soaking hanky and continue the conversation with Damien as if nothing happened.

‘And what message should I convey to my employer?’

Damien laughs. Eliot rolls his eyes and tries not to crush under the mountain of relief because Hardison is still alive and Damien seems to be amused. And as long as Damien is amused, he will make sure Hardison _stays_ alive until he isn’t amusing anymore.

‘Ah, I like this one,’ Damien tells him, and it’s all Eliot can do not to snarl back that Hardison is _his._ He can’t help it; he knows his hackles are up. He knows Damien can see it too, and Eliot knows that Damien finds this situation even more amusing because of it.

But Eliot doesn’t care. They have struck a deal with Damien and they are getting out alive for now. That’s already far more than he dared to hope for.

\---

Hardison is the smartest man Eliot knows. That also means that, when they have left the hotel and are making a brief stop at Hardison’s place so he can change out of his dripping wet suit, Eliot barely has to explain anything.

‘You two seemed pretty cosy,’ Hardison remarks, almost offhandedly while throwing the suit jacket in the direction of the hamper. It lands on the bathroom floor with a splat, and is followed suit by a shirt, tie, pants and socks.

Eliot says nothing. He does retreat out of the bathroom when Hardison, down to his boxers, throws him a meaningful glare, and only steps back in when another wet splat, followed by the shifting and scrabbling of someone long-limbed trying to put on clean boxers without falling over has indicated that Hardison is moderately decent again.

‘So, how long?’ Hardison asks and it would have been better if he’d still been upset. If he’d shouted, if he’d cried and cursed and told Eliot to go fuck himself and never show his face around the team again.

Eliot would have understood that. He wouldn’t have known how to deal with that but he doesn’t know how to deal with _this_ either: with Hardison staring him down in silence, arms crossed and still pathetically half naked in the glaring blue light of his bathroom.

‘How long?’ Hardison repeats. There’s not a single trace of his usual laughter left in his low, leaden voice.

‘Three years,’ Eliot replies, just as softly. ‘Give or take.’

Hardison nods. He swallows and then his face does something complicated that Eliot can’t bear to watch, but he does. Just as he watches how Hardison slowly, with far more attention and focus than he needs, pulls his jeans over his hips and works the button through the hole.

Hardison looks back up at Eliot and _there_ is the flash of hurt. ‘And you didn’t tell us because…’

 Eliot’s mouth twists, but he forces the words out anyway, lame as though they might sound. ‘Because I was tryin’ to protect you.’

‘Riiiiight,’ Hardison says, drawing the word out slow. He looks back at the pile of soaking wet fabric, lying three feet to the right of the hamper. ‘And just how did that work out for you?’

\---

‘ _Tell them,’_ Hardison snarls when they rejoin the team.

Eliot is not a tall man, but he has never felt as small as he does now, standing in front of Nathan Ford, who is seething with righteous wrath, while the others looks on in hurt bewilderment.

He is completely surrounded: Sophie is sinking down on a park bench to his left, her hand clasped in front of her mouth and eyes wide as if she’s acting out a Shakespeare play, only this time it’s real. Hardison is glaring daggers from where he’s sitting on the park bench to Eliot’s right, with Parker sitting next to him. She has scooted up to Hardison a little closer than necessary and that’s bad too, because this is not the Parker who has no patience for silly things like personal space; this is Parker who is surreptitiously seeking an anchor point because her world has been set adrift for a moment and up until now, Eliot thought that _he_ was one of her anchor points.

‘I was tryin’…’ he tries to tell Nate, but Nate isn’t having it.

 ‘You were trying, what?’ Nate asks, voice cold as ice. ‘To protect him? Is that what you were…?’

‘I was protecting _you!’_ Eliot throws back, far more vehement than he intended because _no._ He stares at Nate, who is still glowering, tries to get his breath back after an accusation that feels like a punch to the gut _._ ‘Alright? Last time I checked, that was my job!’

He snaps his mouth shut, swallowing heavily. Because Eliot has been injured a lot. He has been shot, stabbed, punched, burned, tortured, he has had all his ribs broken at least once and he’s got half a dozen toes with nails that won’t grow back. But broken ribs and torn out toenails are _nothing_ compared to the sudden distrust he can feel radiating from the four people in the world that he trusts without question (OK, maybe one or two questions when it’s Nate, but that’s not the point).

The thought that Eliot kept quiet because he was protecting _Damien,_ not these people, the people he would and is probably going to die for, but _Damien Moreau,_ feels like a serrated knife slowly entering his ribcage and being twisted around until all he can do is stand still and breathe, trying his hardest not to let the others show just how close he is to cracking.

This is the team that tethered him, threw him a rope and hauled him out of the hell pit he had gotten himself into. Now that tether is about to snap, he can feel the rope fraying at the edges and he feels like he is losing his balance already. He can feel Hardison’s glare burning through his skin, but he can’t look him in the eye. He hears Sophie’s soft gasp, notices how Parker is hunching in on herself even more and he looks away again, back to Nate because somehow, Nate Ford is the easiest to deal with right now.

Nate does backtrack, thankfully. Lowers his hand in calming manner and tells him that they can handle Moreau and Eliot almost starts laughing because apparently, Nate still knows _nothing._

 _You know nothing, Nate Ford,_ he thinks, and that almost makes him giggle because that lame reference is suddenly the funniest thing in the world.

He catches himself, right in time. Takes a breath. Steadies himself again, as much as he can.

‘We’re out of our league, Nate,’ he says quietly, and then, because he already feels like he is being flayed wide open so one more cut won’t matter, he adds, dragging out each word like a splinter from a festering wound: ‘The worst thing I have ever done. In my entire life. I did for Damien Moreau.’

It’s funny how the world always comes into razor-sharp focus when everything is about to go completely to hell.

In the silence, a bird’s song echoes out of the bushes behind the bench. A mother yells at her child to stay within sight while the child, cheering at the top of its voice, races away on a bright red bicycle. A dog barks. Wind rustles through the trees and tugs at Eliot’s hair. It smells of rain and Eliot makes a mental note to cover up his tomatoes before it starts because they have already seen enough water this week.

It’s Parker who breaks the silence first. ‘What did you do?’

\---

_Don’t run. Running makes you a suspect. Walk calmly and with purpose, as if you are part of the rescue operation. Don’t stop, don’t make eye contact, and don’t draw attention._

_Make your way out of the military ring. Walk past the emergency services, waiting to see if there is still something, anything they can salvage. Don’t draw attention. Just walk. Leave the people behind and make your way out of the village. Follow the trail into a cluster of trees about a mile from the main road._

_Find the car. Drive away._

_Don’t listen to the screams that are still ringing in your ears. Don’t pay attention to the rumbling behind you as part of the school building comes crashing down._

_Drive away._

_Leave over three hundred people, most of them children, dead behind you in the dust._

_Don’t look back._

_\---_

Breathing is getting more and more difficult, but Eliot looks Parker square in the eye because she deserves that much. She deserves an honest answer too, but at the moment that might be more than he can give. Which is why he softly, almost pleadingly (because Eliot Spencer does not plead, except for when he does), says: ‘Don’t ask me that, Parker.’

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she does ask him. He says he will tell her, but that depends. He might start screaming first. He might start running.

He might not even find the words.

Not that he’d need many words. In fact, he can already picture the entire conversation if Parker does ask, and it starts with just the two:

‘Beslan. 2004.’

‘You were there?’ Sophie will ask next. Because out of all of them, Eliot is pretty sure that Sophie will know immediately what he is talking about and his heart bleeds for her.

He will try to look away, but will find that he can’t. ‘I was in charge.’

And that will be the end of it.

\---

Thank god Parker does not ask.

\---

For six months, Eliot has been waiting for the bomb to drop. He supposes it’s sort of satisfying that it turns out to be a literal one. But they have an in to the auction, Nate manages to come up with a plan that does _not_ involve Eliot killing Atherton and so, at the end of the day, they go home because there is nothing else left for them to do.

The moment the door of his apartment locks behind him, Eliot’s knees start to buckle. He manages to drag himself over to the threadbare couch just in time before he crashes down on to the floor. For a good ten minutes, he sits motionless, hunched in on himself while the spartan living room revolves around him in a hazy black whirl that makes him want to vomit.

Strangely enough, his mind is empty.

He should be planning, he should be behind his laptop and seeing what he can find that Hardison didn’t, but he can’t. He should be going over the meeting at the pool, checking the records of the goons and Models that were there and see if any of them might pose an unexpected threat, but he can’t.

He should call Hardison and try to apologize, try to _fix this,_ but he can’t.

He should get to the kitchen, get the pasta carbonara he had planned for tonight going. But just thinking of the smell of food makes him nauseous and his legs have gone completely numb, so he can’t.

All he can do is sit and wait and breathe in the darkness.

Until there is a knock at the door.

And that’s weird.

Because there are just two people out of seven billion that know where he lives and one of them does not knock. Or use the door. And the other one has absolutely no reason, no reason _at all_ to be outside of Eliot’s apartment knocking at his door right now.

There is another knock. More insistent this time.

It takes Eliot another minute, and another two knocks at the door followed by a soft but audible ‘Eliot, man, open up,’ before he can get up and make his way to the door.

The bolt slides back. The key turns. The door opens and reveals Hardison, dressed in a ratty old Star Trek t-shirt and sweatpants, almost as if he was about to go to bed but decided he needed to come here first.

Eliot blinks up at him. The phrase ‘ _what the hell’_ is somewhere at the back of his throat, but has no chance to make it out because Hardison gets there first: ‘Don’t leave.’

Eliot blinks again. ‘What?’

‘Don’t leave,’ Hardison repeats. He doesn’t move from where he’s standing at the doorway, so the only way Eliot can see his face is by the bare yellow lightbulb of the hallway overhead. It flickers from time to time, which makes the already weird as fuck situation even more surreal.

It hurts Eliot’s eyes. He drags a hand over them, trying to clear his vision and finds that it comes away more damp than usual. And that’s weird too.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he rasps when the silence drags on. It comes out sharper than he wants to because while he is exhausted to the bone, completely numb and quite possibly on the edge of a massive nervous breakdown, Hardison thinking he might bail on the team still stings. ‘Hardison, I’m not…’

Hardison glares and shakes his head. Eliot stops. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ He pauses, and his face softens as he says: ‘I know you won’t bail on us in the middle of a job. I know you wouldn’t do that. But. When this is over. Don’t. Leave.’

He doesn’t give Eliot the time to respond. His footsteps are already echoing through the dingy hallway while Eliot is staring after him, still trying to process what just happened.

He closes the door.

He turns the key and slides the bolt back into place.

And heads into the kitchen while firmly ignoring the blonde flash of movement he catches from the corner of his eye, like the world’s strangest bird flying past his window.

Time to get the carbonara going.

\---

When he wakes up an unknown amount of hours later, the rain is clattering against the windows and his tomatoes have gone completely to hell.

He tries to salvage what he can, carrying the pot inside immediately and placing it on the kitchen counter. First, he carefully pours the excess water that is still standing on the soil into the sink. Then he gently takes the plant out of the pot, places it on a bed of old towels he keeps for exactly this kind of emergency, and starts removing the soaking wet soil from around the roots, only keeping the barest minimum of compost intact.

It’s a task that requires focus and steady hands and Eliot can feel his breathing slow down as he works. The soft rustle of the tomato leaves as he brushes past them, the dark brown smell of the earth that lands in the bowl next to him with a damp, heavy thud is soothing and as he finishes, filling up the pot with new, fresh, dry soil and placing the tomato plant into it, he is almost relaxed enough to smile.

He’s not sure they will be fine; he might have been too late, because the leaves are still disturbingly yellow and drooping. But it’s all he can do for now, so when he’s done, he brushes the fallen earth into a dustpan, dumps it into the thrash and takes the tomatoes back outside. The sky is blue and cloudless, warmth already seeping into his skin even at 7am. It should be a sunny day; hopefully that will be enough to get them going again.

And then he gets himself dressed and goes out to kill a decorated US General.

\---

The ride with Chapman to Atherton’s house is… annoying. Chapman is annoying, the car stinks of Axe and testosterone and traffic is a nightmare. It takes them about fifteen minutes longer to get to Atherton than Eliot anticipated and yes, every minute spent in Chapman’s company is one too many because the guy will. Not. Shut. _Up._

Which is kind of logical, given that he is suddenly in charge over his former superior and is determined to let Eliot feel it. Especially after all the shit Eliot put Chapman through back in the day because, as he is forcefully reminded, Chapman is, was and always has been a goddamn _punk._

‘You know, San Lorenzo’s very nice this time of year,’ Chapman says as he moves the car forward another hundred feet. ‘You sure you don’t want to visit? We could spare a room at the house, your old room’s gone I’m afraid, but we can make do. We can always make do. And of course, Larisa would be happy to see you again.’

He looks at Eliot and grins an unpleasant grin. Eliot closes his eyes, leans back in his seat and does not reply that he has absolutely no wish to see San Lorenzo, the house or the dark-haired, long-legged, blue-eyed, sharp-tongued and sharp- _knifed_ Moreau Model that almost killed him twice in one night (although in very different ways and for very different reasons) ever again.

‘Who’s _Larisa_ ,’ he hears the bemused drawl of Hardison over the comms. Followed by a clacking of keys that has Eliot groan and quietly mutter: ‘Don’t.’

The clacking stops. So far, Chapman hasn’t paid any attention whatsoever to what Eliot is saying and he is not going to start now so Eliot quietly continues: ‘Don't… don’t go looking, alright?’

Hardison’s eye roll is almost audible. ‘Alright, Mr. Mystery Man. We’ll just add that to that nice long list of things we’re gonna talk about when this whole mess is over, okay? Okay.’

‘Sure,’ Eliot mutters back. But the clacking stops, although Hardison’s muttering, nagging and bitching doesn’t.

That’s okay. Eliot can tune that out if he wants to.

\---

‘I wanted to extinguish the entire family,’ Chapman says when they finally pull up to the house. ‘Like we usually do.’

Yes. Eliot remembers that.

\---

 _‘What the_ fuck _were you thinking, Chapman?’ Eliot growls. ‘Huh? Tell me, tell me what the fuck you were thinking because I’m not even entirely sure you were_ _thinking at all. What the fuck is this?’_

_He gestures to the laptop behind him. A news website fills the screen and the picture of a grinning, gap-toothed boy with a mass of honey blond curls fills the front page of the website. Next to the picture a headline in all caps screams bloody murder, which, in this case, is entirely correct._

_‘It’s a lesson,’ Chapman says, crossing his arms and jutting out his chin. ‘Moreau said to teach ‘im a lesson, so I did.’_

_‘Right, a lesson,’ Eliot says, snapping the laptop shut. ‘Lemme give you a lesson then, alright? You shoot up a diplomat, no one bats an eye. People think he’s government, probably did something skeevy on the side, had it comin’, too bad for him. You shoot up a diplomat’s seven year old and very cute_ kid, _and the whole world starts baying for your blood.’_

_Chapman still looks mulish. Eliot closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Tell me again how much heat you got on you right now?’_

_Chapman deflates. He looks at his shoes and mumbles something that sounds like ‘intrasmol.’_

_‘Right, just Interpol then,’ Eliot repeats at a significantly louder volume. ‘No big deal. You do realize that burning your ID and cleaning up your mess is gonna come out of your paycheck, right?’_

_Chapman looks back up, about to protest, but swallows his words when he sees the thunderclouds rolling over Eliot’s head._

_Eliot shakes his head. ‘Get out.’_

_\---_

_‘You know, our Mr. Chapman might be on to something,’ Damien muses. ‘I agree that the, ah, execution might have left something to be desired, but it did have some unforeseen and rather beneficial consequences. Do you remember Mr. Endstra?’_

_Sure Eliot did. A Dutch real estate mogul who supplemented his already sizable fortune by laundering money for the Amsterdam drug cartels. He has been on Moreau’s naughty list for a couple of months now and if Chapman hadn’t been such a punk, he would already have been permanently removed from that list, and any other lists he happened to be on._

_‘He has become much more… compliant, all of a sudden,’ Damien says. ‘Yes. Mr. Chapman’s bout of creativity might have been useful after all.’_

_Eliot sighs. ‘Fine. But if any of it comes back to bite him, I’m not helping him out.’_

_\---_

Eliot knows how to pretend to snap someone’s neck and Atherton knows how to play dead. That’s pretty much all they need, although Sophie’s dramatic rendition of The Grieving Widow definitely helps too. But at least it’s good enough to fool the M.E., which means it’s good enough to fool Chapman (which isn’t that difficult, but still), which means that thirty minutes later, Eliot’s phone buzzes.

‘You haven’t lost your touch,’ Damien tells him cheerfully and Eliot wants to vomit. He doesn’t bother wasting words on a reply; he just hangs up as soon as Damien tells him to be at the auction in one hour.

Ten seconds later, his phone buzzes again. With a message this time, containing the coordinates to a warehouse on a private airfield just outside of Boston.

And that’s not right.

Of course, in theory, an abandoned warehouse on an airfield that has virtually no border control would be the perfect place to stage an international auction. But Eliot knows the kind of people that might be interested in high tech bombing equipment. They are they kind of people that prefer to do their business in a little more luxury.

Whatever Moreau has in store for them, it won’t be what they are looking for. But there must be _something_ so, even though his heart is somewhere at the bottom of his stomach and every fiber of his being is telling him to _run now,_ Eliot flips the phone shut, switches on the comms and tells Nate where they need to go.

\---

The bomb stealing part of the team seems to have some trouble, as Eliot hears over the comms. He wishes he could be surprised, but Hardison’s panicked voice telling them that the bomb’s not there only fills him with a cold and heavy resignation. Because of course the bomb is not where it’s supposed to be. And of course there is absolutely no sign of an auction in this empty warehouse. And of course the only thing they find inside is the Italian, unconscious and tied to a chair.

 _Like honey in a fly trap,_ is all Eliot has time to think before the doors slam shut. _And aren’t we the dumbest fucking flies around._

Then the Italian’s phone rings. The Italian is still tied up and Nate is working the knots, so it’s up to Eliot to answer.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ he promises Damien, and it is a promise. He just doesn’t say where, exactly, because Eliot might find himself hurtling down to hell any minute now but he’ll be damned if he won’t take Damien down with him.

‘You know, the white hat _really_ doesn’t suit you,’ Damien laughs. ‘But I love the hair.’

Eliot loves his hair too. He takes great pride in his hair, even though he will _never_ admit that out loud and especially not to anybody named Alec Hardison. But in that split second after he hangs up and before he hands the phone back to Nate, he seriously considers going bald for the rest of his life. However long or short that may be.

‘Are we in trouble?’ Nate asks. Rhetorically. The man might have the self-preservation instincts of an eighteen year old drunken frat boy at times and he does not exactly have the same kind of experience Eliot has, but he knows a death trap when he’s in one.

Eliot stands up. ‘Oh yes.’

\---

The first thing Eliot does, once they have untied the Italian and are about to start finding a way out, is take out his earbud.

It hurts, like he’s ripping off part of his ear with it, but he needs to focus on the current situation, not on a situation ten miles away that he can do absolutely nothing about. Hearing Parker and Hardison hash out their plan to get to the bomb is both frustrating and distracting, and he cannot afford any distractions right now.

Besides, comms work two ways. And Eliot does not want Parker and Hardison to hear firsthand what’s about to go down around him and Nate either.

The second thing he does, is punch out the henchman that tries to jump them. It’s easy enough. The man slumps down against a crate, his gun clattering to the ground next to him.

Eliot looks around the tower of crates. Sees the army of gunmen standing between them and the door.

He looks back at the Italian, who is looking down at the floor.

At the fallen gun. Still lying there, waiting.

And suddenly, Eliot knows how this is going to end.

It’s funny. When he was about a hundred years younger, freshly dropped out of college and into the army, he used to hope he would get to go out in a blaze of glory. Dying a hero’s death, saving countless lives and taking as many bad guys with him as possible.

Well, he thinks as he bends down and picks up the gun. One out of three ain’t bad.

‘Are you sure you can actually take down Moreau?’ he asks, putting the gun in his waistband and looking down at the Italian.

The Italian nods. ‘Absolutely.’

Eliot doesn’t trust her. But he trusts her word because right now, there’s nothing else he can do. Because if. No. _After_ he dies here, he has to make sure there will be someone else who will finish the job. He doesn’t like leaving things unfinished, especially not when the unfinished business involves the most dangerous criminal on the planet who knows exactly what Eliot’s team looks like.

‘Alright,’ he says softly, over Nate’s stunned voice going: ‘Eliot.’ It seems Nate has caught on to what Eliot is going to do and he is trying to make it stop. And Nate Ford might be a genius, a chess master who always, always finds a loophole out of any situation but right now, the board is on fire, the pawns and knights and rooks have fled and there’s just one way this game is going to end.

There’s one way this game was always going to end.

‘Nate,’ he says, as gently as he can manage. ‘Get her out of here.’

He doesn’t wait for Nate’s response. He pulls out the gun, cocks it, and starts walking. Past the barrels and pallets and around the corner where Moreau’s army is waiting for him.

The first shot rings out. Eliot fires back and then the world goes red.

\---

_Eliot doesn’t like guns._

_Guns are messy. Guns draw attention. Guns are loud, they are impractical and the odds of losing them in a fight and having them turned against you are far too high._

_Guns are traceable. Guns have serial numbers which you can file off, of course, but that’s not the point. Guns have calibers and each gun leaves unique markings on its bullets. Any dedicated cop can find those and use them as another step in the trail that leads them back to you._

_Guns aren’t as deadly as people think. A gun can miss a moving target easily, and if it hits, an immediate kill is far from guaranteed. A gun can also run out of ammo if you miss too often and a man in a fight with an empty gun, is a dead man._

_Knives and fists are quiet. They don’t require maintenance, or bullets. One bruise, one stab wound is just like any other and good luck to the cop trying to build a case around that._

_Knives don’t need to be precise to bring someone down. Up close, moving targets aren’t as much of a problem. An opponent can’t wrestle your fists away from you, although they are of course welcome to try. Because when they do, they get even closer and that is when you can use your_ other _fist, the one that may or may not be hiding a knife, to end the fight before it has even started._

_And you can walk away without leaving a trace._

\---

The world is on fire and Eliot still sees red when he stands up.

The air around him is dense and he moves slowly, as if making his way through molasses. His nose burns with the heavy smell of oil and gunpowder, and his ears are ringing with the echoes of various explosions, but all this is external. Irrelevant. It doesn’t matter, because all that matters lies behind him in a cloud of blood and fire and oil and death. There is no rational thought to any of this as he stumbles forward, stumbles _out._ No emotion except the cold, efficient ruthlessness that is all too familiar.

There is a shifting sound behind him. He spins around, because _sound_ is _danger_ and _danger_ is _dead._

Except it’s not danger. It’s just Chapman, and Chapman is so far from danger that the red starts to fade out and change into the vivid orange and yellow of the flames behind him.

Eliot breathes out.

‘I thought you didn’t like guns,’ Chapman sneers. It sounds odd. Muted and muffled as if he’s talking from the other side of a cotton wall.

Eliot has one bullet left. He wishes he could say he’s saved that one on purpose, but he didn’t. Although perhaps the universe made sure he did because after all of this, it’s clear that the universe has a sense of humor.

Chapman goes down with a stunned look on his face that Eliot in another lifetime would vaguely amusing. ‘Never said I couldn’t use ‘em,’ he mutters, even though here is no one left to hear.

And he walks away.

He makes it almost twenty feet before his legs start to buckle. Thirty feet, and he is grasping at a shelf to keep him upright. The iron bites in his hand, a small burst of pain that shoots white hot up through his arm.

He keeps going.

Thirty-five feet and he is crawling through the warehouse on all fours. His knees are screaming out but he has to move, has to get out, has to get back to Nate and the Italian and Damien, Damien, he has to get to Damien and he can’t.

Thirty-six feet.

The world changes from red to orange to grey to black. Eliot’s arms and legs give way from under him and he crashes down on to the concrete floor, landing face down in the slick of oil and water and blood. He lies deathly still for ten seconds and then, slowly, heavily raises himself up on one elbow and starts vomiting up everything he has ever eaten in his life. He stays there, gasping and retching and trembling all over until all that’s coming up is bile, burning in his throat and acid on his tongue and even then he can’t get up.

It’s too much; his entire body has gone numb and at the same time, everything around him is too intense, too loud, too bright and he can’t believe he made it out.

He blinks. There is a goon lying on the floor behind the shelf. Unmoving, and blood trickling from his nose and mouth. Eliot blinks again and the goon fades away, out of his vision. He takes another deep gasp for air, coughing up smoke and ash when he does. He made it out.

Fumbling for support from the shelves, feeling the rough concrete and smooth steel under his hands.

He made it out.

His chest is heaving, but there is nothing left to throw up. Not even bile. His face is wet, his eyes sting and he hears a whimpering noise but he made it out.

He made it out.

He made it out and if he made it out, then he still has a chance to take down Moreau. And if he can still take down Moreau, because he made it out, then he can make sure his team gets out with him. He can make sure that Nate makes it out, and Sophie makes it out and Parker and Hardison and _Parker and Hardison_ _make it out_. _That_ thought is what finally makes the dry heaving stop. Is what slows him down and pulls him back on to the edge of the cliff, off which he’s hanging by his fingertips.

He can’t stay here. His team needs him.

He takes a deep breath. Covering his nose and mouth this time so he doesn't choke again. He gets his arms and legs back under him and raises himself up, back to all fours. He waits a moment, steadying himself because the warehouse is still swaying around him.

He stands up. With one hand on the shelf behind him for support, he slowly hauls himself upright and finally starts taking full stock of his surroundings again.

The fire is still burning merrily away in the background, but it’ll start burning out soon. It’s not the best kind of cleanup, but it’s a whole lot better than anything else which Eliot could manage himself at this point.

Aside from the fire, nothing moves. There’s no sound, except for Eliot’s heavy breathing and then, after a brief pause, the splashing of his boots across the wet floor as he leaves the warehouse.

And stops again.

His fingers dig into the pocket of his jeans, fumbling around and around until they close on something small and round, about the size of a pea. He stands still, not taking the comms out of his pocket just yet but instead rolling it over and over again between finger and thumb. The plastic is smooth, almost warm to the touch and he keeps thumbing over it, up and down and up and down, following the curve that makes it fit so perfectly into his ear.

He should move. He should take the comms, put it in and go and rejoin the rest of his team, because who knows how much shit they are in right now. Instead he stands still in the dark between the storage shelves, feeling for his comms like a drowning man might reach for a lifeline without having the energy left to do anything useful with it.

Behind him, one of the shelves collapses with a heavy crash. The flames roar even higher with this new source of fuel and Eliot can feel a wave of heat gusting past his face, can feel it blowing through his hair, but it is nothing compared to the tiny ball of warmth that he holds between his fingers.

Taking another deep breath that tastes of ashes, he takes the comms out, brings it to his ear and switches it on. For one moment, he is met with nothing but white noise and he feels the world tilt on its axis again. Then the sound kicks in and he remembers to breathe again as he hears Hardison bitching about Sophie’s driving, Parker cheering and Sophie telling an outrageous story that features Istanbul, a taxi driver and a stolen Renoir painting. He stifles a laugh that sounds suspiciously like a sob before he clears his throat and growls: ‘Warehouse’s clear.’

He’s not sure they heard him. It doesn’t matter if they heard him because at that moment, the _other_ conversation comes through and he hears Nate, thank god he hears Nate tell Moreau… something, something about the Moto case and what sounds like the most elaborate frame job in the history of crime but Eliot doesn’t listen.

Eliot doesn’t listen because he is already running full speed out of the warehouse the moment he hears Damien yell: ‘ _Who are you?_ ’

\---

_Damien didn’t like to shout. He always said it was more effective to stay calm, keep your voice down and let other people do the shouting because while they were raising their voice, he could raise a gun. Or raise a hand and have other people raise their gun, which was even more effective._

_In three years, Eliot had heard Damien raise his voice on three occasions. And on all three occasions, Damien and Eliot were the only ones to walk away afterwards._

\---

Eliot is not going to let that happen again.


	3. Intermezzo

Damien gets away.

Eliot wants to do nothing more than to run after that plane and drag it back down. He actually starts charging after it, not even thinking, not even seeing anything except for the red haze that is still covering part of his vision, when Nate stops him. Grabs his arm, squeezes it hard and tells him to _stay here._

‘Eliot,’ Nate says, sharply and then again, ‘Eliot,’ more softly. ‘Eliot.’ He moves, places himself in front of Eliot, right between Eliot and the runway, taking hold of Eliot’s other arm as well so he forms a physical barrier and Eliot _has_ to stop because he can’t shove Nate aside. ‘Eliot. Listen. Eliot.’

Eliot strains against Nate’s grip for one second, two seconds before the haze starts to fade again. Sight and sound and senses return. The roaring of the airplane engines are a perfect echo of the roaring that is going on inside his head, but it is drowned out by Nate’s voice, now repeating his name over and over again, soothing, calming as if talking to a rearing horse.

‘Eliot, listen. Eliot, he’s not getting away. I promise. Eliot, we’re not done yet. We’re going to take him down, completely. Can you hear me? Eliot, I promise we’re going to go after him. Listen to me, Eliot, we’ve gotten him this far, and we are going to finish him too. I will make sure of that. Even if we have to go all the way to San Lorenzo. Eliot, I promise we will go after him. I promise.’

Nate Ford might be one shifty ass motherfucker but as long as Eliot has known him, he has never made a promise he did not intend to keep. He breathes out, forces himself to relax and steady his breathing before he nods and, without saying a word, steps back.

‘Okay,’ Nate says, still in that ‘calm the frightened animal down’ tone of voice. ‘Okay. Alright.’

He reaches up to the comms in his ear. ‘Sophie, what’s your ETA?’

‘Ten minutes,’ comes Hardison’s reply. He sounds rather cheerful, more cheerful that the situation probably warrants and Eliot remembers hearing the word pretzels being said when he turned his comms back on. ‘And Eliot, man, you wanna hear something? ‘Cause the net’s already closing on our boy Damien over there, he’s got FBI, CIA, Interpol, the whole international Five-O looking for his ass. And his ass _ets,_ well, they’re already bein’ put in the deep freezer. He gets to San Lorenzo, and all he’s got are the suit and underpants he’s wearing right now and the change he’s got lying around but otherwise, he is _broke._ Whatever magic trick Nate just pulled on him, it got him down pretty damn good.’

And that helps too. Eliot looks at Nate, who is watching him with uncharacteristic worry, and clears his throat. ‘It ain’t done here, Nate.’

‘I know,’ Nate says. The worry disappears, much to Eliot’s relief, and is replaced by the cool calculation that means someone’s life is about to get royally fucked up. ‘I know. But if we have to take this to his home turf, we will.’

That’s all Eliot needs. Moreau might have gotten away for now but as long as Nate Ford has a plan, he won’t get far.

\---

In the chaos of paramedics stitching the Italian back together, firefighters trying to salvage the warehouse and Nate filling in the rest of the team about what it was he actually did, it’s easy enough for Eliot to slip away unnoticed.

Well. Almost unnoticed. He’s pretty sure Nate sees him leaving but he doesn’t care. He barely remembers making it home and he knows he probably should not have driven there himself but he doesn’t care about that either. All he cares about at the moment is getting as far away from his team as possible before any of them can start asking questions about all those charred corpses lying around in the burned out warehouse.

He knows they’ll figure it out. They’re not stupid. He just doesn’t want to be around when that happens.

The light in the hallway buzzes and flickers as he slowly makes his way to the front door. The iron sound of the keys in the lock echo in the dim grey around him, and the beeping of the keypad pierces through his eardrums. He opens the door slowly, because it would be just like Damien to leave a nasty little surprise for him, but the apartment is quiet. He can’t see very far into the darkness, but he can see the various tells and traps he has set up and all of them are still where they should be.

He is alone.

He steps in. Closes the door gently, so he doesn’t wake up his neighbors and starts heading towards the kitchen when a ray of yellow streetlight catches his hands and arms.

He stops. Stares at his hands for a good five minutes, almost mesmerized by the way the light catches the flecks of soot and dust, the shine and shimmer of oil and slick and various other liquids that he doesn’t want to think about too closely.

If Toby saw him coming anywhere near a kitchen in this state, he’d kick his ass right out. Hell. If _Eliot_ saw anyone coming into a kitchen like this, he’d kick their ass so hard they wouldn’t be sitting down for at least a week.

_Basic hygiene, Eliot. I don’t care how thinly sliced your salmon fillet is, or how many stalks of celery you can chop up in a minute. It don’t matter how good something tastes if the result is food poisoning, so that’s where we start. Basic. Hygiene._

Eliot closes his fist and scrunches his eyes shut, firmly ignoring how much the yellow and red inside his eyelids look like fire. Shower first. Cooking later.

\---

Warm water is heaven on aching muscles and it gets you right and clean. _Boiling hot_ water is even better because then, if you scrub hard enough, you might get a little cleaner on the inside as well. Eliot doesn’t know how long he’s been in the shower, staring blankly at the wall in front of him while the skin on his back slowly starts to shrivel up and peel away but at last, he turns off the water. Steps out of the shower and into a wall of steam, which envelopes him in a warm, clammy kind of hug.

He slowly towels himself dry and pulls on a pair of sweat pants, not bothering with anything fancy this time. His normal skin and hair care routine can wait until tomorrow (although tomorrow he will probably regret not putting at least _some_ kind of conditioner in). He has other things to do.

Like heading into the kitchen again, gathering his baking supplies and getting started on some flatbread, just to warm up. Because flatbread is easy and forgiving, and only requires three ingredients (two if you don’t care about it tasting like anything).

Flatbread might be a little _too_ easy right now, however. So, as soon as he’s got that dough done and put away to rest, Eliot re-flours his countertop and breaks out the big guns.

Pizza dough is also not difficult, but it requires more strength and it takes longer before it’s properly pounded into submission. Sourdough even more so, although he might have botched that by kneading it too much; it definitely doesn’t have the consistency it should have when he puts it away to rise and he is not sure it will bake well.

Meanwhile the flatbread dough has risen like a dream. He takes it out of the bowl, shapes it and starts up the grill. Three minutes to each side, any longer and it’ll be charcoal instead of bread, and then the sharp, hot smell of baked bread starts to fill his nose and almost takes away the lingering smell of death that is still itching there.

He takes the flatbread out of the grill and puts it on a plate to cool off. That’s his breakfast and lunch done for tomorrow. The pizza dough can wait if he freezes it in time, but the sourdough won’t be ready for baking for another ninety minutes.

And Eliot isn’t done yet. His arms hurt, he is breathing heavily and there’s sweat stinging in his eyes but he’s not done yet. He’s got one pack of flour left, plus a couple of sticks of butter so he takes that, clears his countertop again and then starts pounding the hell out of some puff pastry.

It’s hard work but it’s rewarding and Eliot has almost, almost gathered himself back together enough to maybe start thinking about going to bed (sleeping is another matter entirely), when there’s a knock on his door.

It’s 3.30 in the morning.

Eliot stills for one moment, wrist-deep in the mixing bowl with sour dough (it might actually be salvageable, if he keeps an eye on it while it bakes), before he mutters some choice words and goes to open up the door.

To his total lack of surprise, Hardison is standing in his hallway, bleary-eyed and blinking at the picture in front of him. Eliot knows what he must look like and the words ‘absolute mess’ don’t even begin to cover it: his hair is a mass of damp frizzy curls, there is flour everywhere, he’s got smudges on his cheek and forehead and his facial expression might be a little manic and honestly, who could blame him.

It must be a pretty funny picture but Hardison doesn’t laugh. But he doesn’t say anything else either, so it’s up to Eliot to drag a weary hand over his face and say: ‘Hardison. I told you I aint’ leavin.’

Hardison swallows, a look on his face that Eliot does not have the energy to decipher right now. ‘Yeah. Okay. Uhm. Just. Just checking.’

He turns around and leaves. Eliot watches him disappear down the hallway before he shakes his head, closes the door, and heads back into the kitchen.

\---

The sourdough bread might work very well as a blunt instrument to knock someone out. The flatbread is okay, not his best work but it’s edible. And the look on Parker’s face when he shows up to their first after-job team meeting two days later with a box of Nutella croissants tells him that at least she has already forgiven him for anything and everything he’s ever done.


	4. Finale Furioso

If there’s one silver lining around all of this, it’s that Nathan Ford finally seems to have discovered the word ‘please’. It’s just a little unfortunate that he’s following it up with another attempt to get rid of Moreau, while Eliot wants to do nothing more than fly himself and his team to the farthest corner of the world and go into hiding as alpaca farmers. Or, failing that, move on with their lives and start taking down nice, normal, run of the mill bastards like that overblown multi-million dollar real estate mogul with his own reality TV show and his name in golden letters on a tower in New York. _Fuck_ that guy.

Still. He knows Nate is right. If they don’t finish what they started, Damien will lie low for six months, a year at most, and he will be back. With a vengeance. And Eliot has seen Damien’s vengeance up close, has _been_ Damien’s vengeance himself, and he has no desire to relive that experience ever again.

So. When Nate looks around the circle, promising that if any of them, _any of them and I am not looking at you Eliot,_ doesn’t feel like it, they won’t go after Moreau, Eliot resigns himself to his fate once again.

It’s a little easier, this time. Which is funny, because what Nate is proposing is about a thousand times more dangerous than when the hunt for Moreau first started. They are very much jumping out of the frying pan and into a Californian wildfire but this time, when Nate puts his glass down with a determined clink and Hardison whoops and cheers, Eliot merely nods.

It might have something to do with how Parker’s bar stool is standing practically on top of his, so that her ponytail brushes against his shoulder anytime she moves. Or with how Hardison is standing behind Eliot but, in an effort to get all his intel across, keeps gesticulating and moving and bending over into Eliot’s space but whatever it is. When Nate gives the bar another decisive smack and tells them ‘Let’s go take down Damien Moreau,’ Eliot almost feels like he is breathing a little easier than he has done in months.

‘Let me make some calls first,’ he says. ‘I might have a contact in San Lorenzo who could help.’

Behind him, Hardison stills for a second before he clears his throat. ‘Sure. Imma need some time to put a briefing together anyway. Meeting upstairs tonight?’

‘Tonight,’ Nate says. And that’s that.

\---

_Even after only two years in the army, all the hellholes Eliot has seen are already starting to blur into one. He’s not even sure where he is now, because one grey, miserable podunk town in Eastern Europe looks exactly like the other. This one might be in Yugoslavia, or it might be somewhere in the Caucasus near the Russian border; he doesn’t care. All he cares about is that the town they are rolling into now seems empty. Deserted by the locals, and not yet taken over by the insurgents that have caused another unit so much trouble that corporal Jennings, after the third call for help, had rolled his eyes and gathered the team to go see what the trouble was._

_Fifteen minutes later and Eliot discovers that the trouble was the operative words ‘_ seems _empty’._

_Twenty minutes later and they are huddled together in an abandoned building that, judging by the tiny chairs and desks lying scattered on the floor, used to be a school. Five of the team are still in one piece and are trying to keep the other three from bleeding out while Eliot risks glancing outside and immediately pulls back again, narrowly avoiding a bullet through his eye. It goes whizzing past instead and buries itself in the wall with a dull thud._

_‘Well,’ a heavy voice with an accent he can’t place drawls behind him. ‘Thank goodness the cavalry is here.’_

_Eliot turns around and sees another man standing behind him. He seems to be in his early forties, wears sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve and is watching him with the wry stare of the well and truly fucked._

_‘You Sergeant Flores?’ he asks, looking past the man to see the remains of another unit, half a dozen men gathered near the far end of the school room. ‘That your crew?’_

_The sergeant nods. ‘That would be so, yes. Who is in charge of your team, private…?’_

_‘Spencer, sir,’ Eliot replies, slowly standing up and saluting. ‘Eliot Spencer. And well, technically, that would be corporal Jennings over there.’ He nods to where private Lucas is frantically trying to keep the corporal conscious, despite the red stain over Jennings’ stomach growing bigger and bigger with every breath._

_‘I see.’ Flores rubs his chin, then shakes his head. ‘How old are you?’_

_Eliot is not sure what that has to do with anything, but he straightens up nonetheless. ‘Twenty-two, sir,’ he says with a grin that is probably way too cocky to be aimed at a sergeant. ‘Fourth year, third tour.’_

_‘Oh Madre di…’ Flores groans, then stops and throws himself down on the floor, just in time before another volley of bullets starts whistling through the shattered windows. Eliot drops too, crouching behind one of the desk for some pathetically flimsy kind of cover._

_Silence falls again. For a moment, the only sound is the scraping of feet and furniture over the concrete floor and ragged breaths as heads poke upright, trying to assess whether the danger really has passed or if it is just taking a break._

_When more bullets fail to materialize, Flores turns back to Eliot and shakes his head again. ‘It seems we are out of other options, so, very well. Commander Spencer it is. And now, for the love of god, can you get us out of here?’_

\---

Flores answers at the second ring. ‘Spencer, my boy. Is it the time of year for faces of the past to come back to haunt me?’

That is not what Eliot wanted to hear. Clutching the phone a little tighter, he moves away from the briefing table so that the others won’t listen in before he asks, voice terse: ‘Can you tell me what you mean by that, sir?’

Flores can. And does. And when he’s finished, Eliot walks back over to his team, throws the phone in Hardison’s general directon and watches as the TV wall comes to life with the face of General Armando Flores, who is looking at Eliot with a kind, bemused expression that is both entirely undeserving and incredibly unnerving. For one weirdly real moment, Eliot feels like he’s being thrown back across the years. All the way back to Serbia or Croatia or whatever hellhole it was and he’s standing in a deserted school building again where bullets are flying around his ears and he, in all his twenty-two year old skinny punk ass glory, is staring down an experienced sergeant at least twice his age. He realizes he has even drawn himself up ramrod straight, ready to receive his orders at any moment as he listens to Flores’ account of San Lorenzo, democracy and Moreau’s attempts to chip away at it.

He even smiles as Flores tells Nate that there is no debt owed here, because Eliot saved his life. Twice. Although here, Eliot has to correct him because telling Flores to get out of the country because Damien wanted him killed hardly counts as ‘saving his life’.

And that’s when things go wrong. There are heavy thuds sounding through the room, there’s a brief look of fear on Flores’ face before he is disappeared from view and the oil-slick smile of Damien Moreau takes his place instead.

Everything goes a little hazy at the edges of Eliot’s vision as a heavy buzzing fills his ears, drowning out all other sound. Damien’s mouth is moving but he can’t hear the words, which is perhaps for the best. The haze is creeping in further and further, until his entire vision is swimming in a pale red mist before Nate’s voice calling his name pulls him back.

The TV’s are off. The room is quiet. Eliot turns around to see three faces, all watching him in various degrees of… something. He can’t pinpoint it and he’s not sure he likes it because yes, there is worry there in Sophie’s gentle frown, the uncertainty of Parker edging closer towards Hardison again, but there’s also something that he would almost call compassion and _that_ is something he hasn’t had aimed at him in a very long time.

‘Eliot,’ Nate says again, watching and waiting until Eliot blinks and visibly gets himself back under control.

The room comes back into focus. Eliot nods at Nate, who nods back and gets out his phone.

It seems like Eliot is going back to San Lorenzo after all.

\---

The flight to San Lorenzo is uneventful, and Eliot pretends to sleep through most of it. Except for the first hour and a half or so, which he spends alternatively staring out of the window into the darkness sliding by below them, and stealing looks at Parker and Hardison who are sitting across from him.

Hardison is typing away on his phone as if he is trying to soak up the entire history and economic and democratic structure of San Lorenzo in under eight hours. This is made a little difficult because Parker has fallen asleep on top of him ten minutes after they took off, and Hardison seems to be caught in some kind of religious experience every time he glances sideways.

They make a cute picture, Eliot thinks as he lets himself relax against the window and closes his eyes, trying not to smile. Although at the rate they’re going, hell might freeze over first before anything more intimate happens. Seriously. Eliot has seen continents collide faster.

He does not even try to hide his grin when Parker jolts awake thirty minutes later, looks at Hardison like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming train and then, before Hardison can do or say anything, backs out of her chair and slinks away to a row of empty seats at the back of the plane.

Instead of looking longingly after her, Hardison shakes his head and returns to his phone with a soft smile. Until he catches Eliot looking and tries to glare, keeping it up for a whole two seconds before another crooked grin takes over. ‘Baby steps, man,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Baby steps.’

Eliot doesn’t reply. Just rolls his eyes and settles back into his chair, ignoring Hardison’s huff and trying not to get lost in his own memories about the tiny European country wedged between the French and Italian border.

\---

_‘Tell me, Spencer,’ Damien says. ‘What do you think of San Lorenzo?’_

_Eliot shrugs. He has no strong feelings about this tiny country either way. At least it’s warm. And given that it’s wedged between Italy and France, the food here should be a lot better than in their last hideout._

_‘Not bad,’ he grunts, popping open his beer bottle. He takes a sip. ‘Bit small.’_

_‘Ah, but that’s the beauty of it,’ Damien says, tipping his cocktail towards Eliot with a smile. Behind him, the sun is setting over the hills, casting the patio of the mansion in a warm golden light. It’s quiet up here, nothing to disturb the silence but the occasional cricket and as Eliot leans back against the patio bar, he thinks he would not mind staying here for a while._

_‘You see,’ Damien continues, ‘most countries, the government is wide. Large. Too big to be led this way and that by tugging on more than a single string. It moves as slowly as an elephant in a bog and with about as much grace.’ He pauses to nip his glass and lets out a contented sigh. ‘But here… a dozen people. At most. And over half of them have already shown themselves very… amenable. To my suggestions.’_

_‘Never pegged you for wanting to be president,’ Eliot says with a grin. ‘We gonna see your face on the Euro in a couple months?’_

_Damien throws his head back with a hearty laugh. ‘President, me? No, my friend. I am going to be the man_ behind _the president. They tend to get a lot more done.’_

_Eliot smiles and closes his eyes, letting the late evening sunlight soak into his bones while he takes another sip of beer. ‘Can’t argue with that.’_

\---

The San Lorenzo airport is so tiny it’s adorable. And even if it wasn’t, Eliot does not need the Italian to lead the way out because he has been here more times than he can count.

It hasn’t changed much; there is still the same coffee shop selling lukewarm espressos and soggy pastrami sandwiches to unsuspecting tourists; the customs officers are as grumpy and impatient as ever; and the moment they walk out of the terminal and into the street, Eliot is hit with his strongest déjà vu yet as a gust of wind blows past, carrying the scent of exhaust fumes, hot tarmac and above all, the fragrance of San Lorenzo that he has never found anywhere else. It’s a mixture of ocean air, bakeries and wild lavender and Eliot actually has to stop for a moment, take a deep breath and remind himself where and when he is before he turns to the taxi rank and gets himself to the Moreau mansion on autopilot.

‘Smells nice,’ Parker says. She has stopped too and is sniffing the air like a puppy trying to find out where its owner has stored the treats. ‘I smell gold. Is there a lot of gold around here?’

‘You bet your ass there is,’ Hardison grins from behind them. ‘San Lorenzo is a teeny tiny country but it’s the biggest tax haven this side of the Cayman Islands. So yeah. All those nice white villas you see over there?’ He points in the distance, where gleaming mansions dot the green hills like sugar cubes on a pool table. ‘They are _full_ of money. And the best security systems that that money can buy. Mama, we’re gonna have some _fun_ in here.’

Parker looks as if she’s on the brink of having an orgasm and Eliot groans. ‘You just had to go and say that, did you?’

‘Hey man,’ Hardison says, his grin growing so wide it’s a miracle the top of his head doesn’t fall off. ‘Gotta have something to look forward to after the job is done.’

He makes a good point. Eliot has no clue what he is going to do if they manage to put Moreau away, but taking a tour of San Lorenzo’s rich and famous might not be a bad start.

He shakes his head, trying and failing to hide his own smile in the face of Hardison’s exuberance. Using one hand to keep Parker from dashing off immediately and the other to hail a taxi, he looks back at Hardison. ‘As long as you don’t go in alone, sure.’

Hardison laughs. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

\---

Eliot’s good mood lasts all the way to the hotel. He had forgotten how much he actually kind of liked San Lorenzo: the narrow, winding streets and low, ancient buildings are a far cry from the concrete and steel that is Boston, as are the rolling hills around the city that form a lush, green barrier in front of the snow-capped distant Alps. The air is warm, the sun is bright and during their twenty minute drive Eliot counts no less than five restaurants he used to visit and which he had kind of hoped would still be there. There is one fish restaurant in particular that he needs to introduce to Sophie because out of all of them, he is pretty sure she is the only one who could appreciate a proper bouillabaisse.

Well, her and Nate perhaps. And _that_ thought makes Eliot groan and roll his eyes in the semi-privacy of the taxi and decide that if, _if_ they get out of San Lorenzo in one piece, he is definitely going to apply some well-aimed and not too gentle nudges in Nate’s general direction. It’s been over six months; he is pretty sure two (more or less) stable and mature adults should have gotten over whatever tiff they had going before all this started. Also the aggressive non-flirting is driving him absolutely insane.

That decision does nothing to suppress his good mood, however. The reason his good mood evaporates as soon as they get to the hotel, is this:

‘Hardison.’

‘Look Eliot, I’m sorry but it’s full. This was the best I could do and let me tell you, I’m just as unhappy about it as you are. Promise, swear, cross my heart and hope to die but it’s either this or sleep under that very pretty bridge out there and you know, seeing as we’re up against your previous all-powerful crime boss, I’d rather have a little more security than you usually find in your standard back alleyway.’

Eliot pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘You tellin’ me this is the _only_ hotel. In _all of_ San Lorenzo. That had any free rooms. And it just happened to be _four_ free rooms so the _only_ solution you could come up with was for the two of us. You and me. To share a room?’ He looks up again, favoring Hardison with the full on Eliot Spencer glare that has sent many lesser men screaming for the hills. ‘Are you _kidding_ me?’

Hardison, damn him, is less than impressed. ‘Wish I was, man,’ he says, shaking his head and doing a very bad job at hiding a smirk. ‘Wish I was.’

Eliot doesn’t buy that bull for a second. ‘ _Dammit_ , Hardison.’

And stomps off to the elevator without looking back.

He is not an idiot. He knows exactly why he’s rooming with Hardison and it’s not because the rest of the hotel is booked full. He doesn’t mind too much though; if he is being babysat, at least it’s in one of the more luxurious hotels San Lorenzo has to offer and the room Hardison procured for them is large enough to properly classify as a royal suite. It covers the entirety of the top floor, the gigantic windows offer a magnificent view of the city all around (and a magnificent opportunity for any sniper Moreau might send their way, which Eliot does not mention out loud) and the beds are an absolute dream in down and Egyptian cotton.

‘Hey, if you really want me to return these rooms, I could,’ Hardison grins as Eliot stands in the doorway, taking all of this in with a suspicious frown. ‘I could probably find something else. If you really want to.’

Eliot shakes his head and throws his duffel bag towards one of the beds. It misses and hits the hardwood floor with a dull _thunk._ ‘Shut up.’

\---

After stealing, amongst other things, a mountain, an entire orphanage, a Fabergé egg, a mayor, a high school reunion and the Department of Defense, it was only a matter of time before Nate would propose stealing an entire country.

Well, technically they are going to steal a presidential election. Which is not that hard, as Hardison points out. _If_ you’re not going up against someone else trying to steal it as well, as Eliot points out.

Moreau has roots here. Deep roots that have spread and tangled themselves all through the San Lorenzo government and that have grown sturdy and strong throughout the years. Nate might be able to get the school teacher to win the election but the truth is? Vittori won’t last ten minutes unless they uproot the entire system from within.

Which is where Eliot’s part of the play comes in. They can’t use him in the more public part of the con just yet, as Nate rightly points out, because that would raise more red flags than you would find at a military parade in North Korea. But there is something else they need to pull this con off and honestly, even if Nate hadn’t asked him to Eliot would have done it himself. After all, three times is the charm and all that.

‘I gather you have been down there before?’ Nate asks. Without judgment, Eliot notices, but it still stings a little.

He nods. ‘I have. It ain’t gonna be easy, though.’

‘That’s okay,’ Parker says, already bouncing on her heels and looking eager like a puppy waiting to go for walkies. ‘It’ll be fun! I’ve never broken someone out of prison before!’

She catches their incredulous looks and Nate’s raised eyebrow, rolls her eyes and continues: ‘Not a _real_ prison. Eliot, are there rats down there? Like, big rats that gnaw on your face when you fall asleep?’

‘Probably,’ Eliot concedes and tries not to laugh at Parker’s excited squeal.

‘ _Yes!_ Let’s go steal a general!’

\---

 

_‘So I am a target for Damien Moreau now?’ Flores says. He carefully puts the file down and looks up at Eliot. ‘Good. That means I must be doing something right.’_

_His hair has receded a little and his face looks a little more weathered but otherwise he has not changed much. Eliot has, however, in the fifteen years that lie behind him, and he knows Flores can see it loud and clear. It’s in the look Flores gives him, which is no longer the look of a sergeant to an arrogant little rookie. Instead they are standing in Flores’ study, a careful distance between them like they are two generals from an opposing army meeting before battle._

_Which, in a way, they are. Except for one tiny detail._

_‘But why are you here, then?’ Flores asks. ‘I do not have much experience with assassinations, but I do not think they announce themselves like this.’_

_The detail being that Eliot is about to go AWOL on Moreau because after four years of inflicting horror and bloodshed without prejudice, he has finally found a line in the sand he is not going to cross._

_He doesn’t know why. There’s nothing special about Flores. The world won’t weep for him like it did for Beslan, or the diplomat’s boy, or any other schmuck Eliot took out on Damien’s orders in the past few years. Hell, Eliot himself would not have cared if the man lived or died by any other means._

_But not like this._

_\---_

_It only takes Damien two hours to find out that his favorite sheepdog has left the flock. So two hours and ten minutes after Eliot has left Flores very much alive in his study, his phone buzzes._

_‘I am not pleased about this, Spencer,’ the cool, clipped voice of Damien greets him. He doesn’t sound angry. Instead he sounds tired and disappointed, a little like Eliot’s dad used to sound. If Eliot’s dad had ever decided to run a global criminal enterprise, of course._

_Eliot doesn’t waste any breath on insincere apologies. ‘I won’t work against you, Moreau. But I’m not working for you anymore either. Goodbye.’_

_He doesn’t give Damien a chance to reply. He drops the phone on the tarmac before boarding the plane that will carry him out of San Lorenzo and into the unknown._

\---

For such a tiny country, San Lorenzo has a long and bloody history. Over the course of the centuries, it has been claimed by the French, Italians, Spanish, English and even the Swiss one time when they were feeling particularly bold. And as each regime change meant that previously loyal supporters were now dangerous dissidents, the San Lorenzo presidential palace soon gained enough cellars to house a small army. Literally.

These cellars are dark, dank, damp and deep underground. And escape proof. Eliot knows that better than anybody; he once studied the plans in detail because Damien wanted to know his professional opinion.

‘They might be useful,’ Damien had said, ‘but only if they are as strong as these guys claim they are. Tell me what you think.’

Now, as he and Parker are making their way past the official prison and down the rough, uneven steps to the _unofficial_ cellar block, Eliot gives Nate the same answer he gave Damien then: _this is a kill box._ And where that used to be a good thing, now Eliot is cursing inwardly and trying not to feel defeated before they have even started. Even if they managed to get Flores out of his cell, they would have to be very, _very_ lucky to get him topside in one piece.

Unless you have a world class thief with you, of course. A world class thief who, after pouting and muttering about the lack of rats down here, taps a pipe, sings a note which is surprisingly on-key and proclaims that they’re here.

(Although the steam vent? Is not happening, if Eliot has anything to say about it. It is true that if anyone could pull it off without burning to a crisp it would be Parker, but still. No sense in trying before they’ve hit all the other dead ends first.)

While Eliot takes out the burner phone and wraps it in a Ziploc bag, Parker wrenches open the pipe. The lid comes off with a resounding clang, the phone lands in the dark water with a splash and off it goes.

Eliot watches it disappear into the darkness before he brings a hand to his ear. ‘Nate, we’re about to make contact.’

\---

Hearing Flores’ voice is a relief. Eliot had been pretty sure that Moreau would not be the one to break out the torture implements, but it would have been just Damien’s style to dispatch Flores after he had been disappeared. It’s what Eliot would have done. It’s what Eliot used to do, clean up Damien’s loose ends rather than leaving them languishing in a cellar, waiting for someone to come in and break them out.

If they wanted to, at least. And didn’t possess some kind of conscience that Eliot really really wishes they didn’t.

‘And my people?’ Flores asks and even though Eliot had been expecting the question, it still lands in his stomach like a heavy ball of lead. ‘They’re my men and they’re down here with me. I can’t leave without them.’

Eliot closes his eyes, mentally steeling himself because Flores is not going to like this. ‘Sir, we can barely find a way to get you out of there alone,’ he pleads.

Next to him, Parker is tapping pipes and humming notes. Eliot isn’t entirely sure what her purpose is but that doesn’t matter. Because then Flores asks another question, one that Eliot doesn’t reply to although he has known the answer for nearly three years now.

‘These people you are with now,’ Flores asks, the words carving their way oh so gently across Eliot’s skin, ‘would you leave any of them behind? Ever?’

The tapping and humming has stopped. Eliot turns around to see Parker smiling at him, a happy innocent smile that makes her look like a kid on an exciting adventure. Parker, tough as nails and fragile as spun glass Parker, is watching him with a patience and trust he has hardly earned.

Over the comms he hears Vittori’s press conference become a spectacular train wreck until Sophie, beauty and grace and keep an eye on your valuables while you’re talking to her Sophie, steps in and effortlessly brings the situation back under control. Nate splutters and sputters but he while might be a chess master extraordinaire, he is no match for his queen. There’s a steady stream of muttering and clacking of keys in the distant background as well, which tells Eliot that Hardison, who once robbed the bank of Iceland to pay for his Nana’s medical bills, is still alive and kicking and probably already getting the backstory of ‘Rebecca Ibanez’ out into the world.

‘I thought so,’ Flores says. ‘Leave me here.’

The line goes dead.

Eliot shoves the phone back into his pocket.

He catches the worried look Parker gives him. Only for a split second, because then it disappears into a mischievous smirk again as she turns the flashlight upside down under her chin and starts making spooky noises that echo hauntingly throughout the tunnels.

‘Nate,’ Eliot groans, waving at Parker to _cut that out,_ ‘I hope you’re having a better day than we are.’

\---

On the way back up, Eliot gathers that Nate is not having a good day either. Because Sophie might have put Vittori on a leash and saved the press conference but that also means that not ten minutes later he hears Hardison go: ‘Oh hell, it’s Moreau.’

Yeah. Eliot supposes it was only a matter of time, but still. Hearing Moreau oh so casually chatting with Nate and Hardison is still very bad, so bad in fact that Eliot wants to do nothing more than storm up the stairs and take down Moreau right then and there because his team is _his_ and Damien does _not_ get to touch them.

But then Moreau says ‘Make it interesting, Ford.’

And Eliot stops.

Because that did not sound right.

Eliot heard that tone of voice before. That overconfident voice that is _supposed_ to make the other party feel like they’re losing, but actually means that Moreau is not as sure of his inevitable victory as he seems.

‘Everything OK?’ Parker asks. She is looking annoyed, a little frown on her face and a crinkle in the bridge of her nose that tells Eliot she is even less happy about Moreau talking to Hardison (and Nate. But mostly Hardison) than he is.

Eliot pauses. Tries to forcefully shove down the treacherous thorns of hope that are starting to prickle in his gut before he replies. He hasn’t seen Damien in years. Hasn’t talked to him, hasn’t been in the loop of Damien’s plans for a long time.

He might be wrong. He might want to remember something that isn’t there.

But he doesn’t think he is.

‘Let’s just get back upstairs,’ he says. The annoyed look on Parker’s face doesn’t fade, but she doesn’t push him either. She does grumble a little about Eliot not letting her go through a steam vent, but Eliot’s learned to tune such things out by now.

What he _can’t_ tune out is the fact that Nate apparently put Parker in charge of the operation Discredit Ribera. Which on one hand is great, because Eliot secretly has a lot more faith in Parker’s sense of self-preservation than he has in Nate’s. But on the other hand:

‘Parker.’

‘Eliot.’

‘Parker, I’m not gonna go on live TV with a puppy accusing the president of hosting an illegal dog fighting ring!’

‘But… puppy! Look how cute he is!’

‘… you already got the puppy?’

‘Of course I did! Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy hmmm?’

‘Parker…’

‘Man, you might as well give in because I want to see this too.’

‘Hardison, shut up.’

‘I’m just saying. Think of Moreau’s face when he sees you on live TV smooching a puppy, hmm? If you wanted to, I could probably hack into the security feed and get you a picture.’

‘… Give me the damn dog.’

(Hardison isn’t wrong. Eliot would have given _everything_ to see Moreau’s face when watching the interview with Canadian animal rights activist Ray Laroque. Especially because Eliot has used that alias before, in an entirely different context. He can only hope Damien remembers it as well, but Eliot isn’t too worried he won’t.)

\---

_‘Spencer, what the hell?’_

_‘Damien, I told you. I ain’t big on killing animals.’_

_Damien heaves a sigh and glares at the German Shepherd sitting at Eliot’s feet, tongue lolling out in a happy doggy grin. ‘So you decided to bring it here.’_

_Eliot shrugs. ‘’s the safest place. She’ll stay with me until the heat dies down, then I’ll take her to a buddy of mine somewhere far away. He’s been looking for a new guard dog, so I think Lucy will do just fine.’_

_‘Lucy,’ Damien groans. ‘Of course. Lucy. So, let me summarize this: I sent you to take out the sniffer dog that has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in seized contraband, and you had, what, an attack of conscience? You going soft, Spencer?’_

_Eliot stops scratching Lucy’s ear to glare back at Damien. ‘I made different call,’ is all he says before he returns his attention to the dog, who is whining softly because of the sudden lack of scritches._

_‘A different call,’ Damien repeats in a defeated tone of voice. ‘Sure. Just don’t let her chew up my shoes, will you? And rest assured that any and all flea removal will come out of your paycheck as well.’_

_Eliot grins. ‘Whatever you say, boss.’_

_\---_

Nate is good at ruining a mark’s reputation, but Eliot thinks he might have found his match in Parker. Because it turns out Parker is _scary_ good at bringing someone down in front of a crowd.

‘Eliot, take this. Put it on the watch, but be careful and don’t touch it.’

Eliot warily eyes the little jar Parker is holding out to him, with a not unreasonable fear it might explode in his hand. ‘… what is it?’

‘Nicotine cream,’ Parker tells him with a bright grin, as if she’d said ‘chocolate chip cookies’.

Eliot lowers the jar very, very slowly and looks at Parker. ‘Nicotine cream.’

‘Yes!’ Parker says, bouncing on the balls of her feet. ‘Come on, the press conference is in an hour!’

After chewing his lip for a whole second, Eliot decides to swallow the dozen or so replies that are lining up and fighting for attention in his brain. It won’t make any difference and they _are_ trying to steal this election so all he says is: ‘Sure. Give me five minutes.’

Then he puts the jar down again and goes back to the hotel room to dig some cotton swabs out of Hardison’s toiletry bag.

\---

For a con that dances so closely around Damien Moreau, Eliot has barely seen the man since they touched down in San Lorenzo. He doesn’t know if this is on purpose or not, but he doesn’t really care. He also doesn’t really mind being sidelined for most of the job, besides the Break Flores Out Of Jail part which is just going _swimmingly,_ because for the first time since this whole mess started, he starts to get the feeling that his team might actually get out of this alive and, more importantly, that _he_ might be getting out alive. _And_ that the team is not turning their backs on him as he expected (and deserves). Which is kind of blowing his mind, but there’s no denying it. And Eliot doesn’t understand, doesn’t really _want_ to understand, but he is starting to see it more and more clearly now.

It’s in the little things. Hardison helicoptering over him to the point where they’re sharing a hotel room, for instance. Eliot doesn’t mind sharing, not in the least, but he knows that after growing up in a house where even the broom closet was once turned into a two kids’ bedroom, Hardison really, _really_ likes his privacy. (Also, the man has a tendency to sprawl. Everywhere. Those cotton swabs Eliot needed? He finds them, not in the toiletry bag in the bathroom. Or on the night stand. Or in the suitcase. No. He finds them _under his own pillow_ and he does _not_ want to know how they got there).

But that’s just one thing. He also tells Sophie about the sea food restaurant and she squeezes his arm and promises him a ‘date’ when Moreau is gone. And while Sophie is spoken for, very firmly although Nate doesn’t seem to be in a rush to do anything about it, Eliot would be lying through his teeth if he didn’t feel the tips of his ears warm up, ever so slightly.

(And judging by the smirk Sophie gives him, she notices too. Damn her.)

Parker is… Parker. Which is another very good sign. Because Eliot knows Parker by now, knows how difficult trust is for her and how easy it is to lose. But she still pokes him around, she still makes spooky noises in inappropriate places and she still wrangles him into holding a puppy on live TV. Which is as good as it is going to get, so Eliot is not complaining.

And while Nate may or may not be intentionally sidelining him, Eliot is still here. In San Lorenzo. In on the con, in on the job. Part of the team. And Eliot knows that if Nate even had the slightest of misgivings, one finagle of doubt, Eliot would still be in Boston. Maybe Nate would have come up with a bullshit excuse, maybe he would have been honest. But he would not have taken Eliot with him if he didn’t trust him completely, which is another reason Eliot is not complaining about anything.

Well.

Maybe just one little thing.

‘Sophie, are you kidding me? No!’

‘Oh but Eliot, think about it! The drama! Everybody who wasn’t on Vittori’s side before will rally around him and turn on Ribera in an instant, all because of an act of senseless violence _right_ after he has been announced victorious. It’s a tragedy right in the heart of what should have been a celebration so _please?’_

Eliot scowls and tries to hide the fact that his resolve is already slipping. It’s a badly hidden secret that Sophie isn’t the only one on the team with a certain flair for dramatics. ‘Sophie, I’m not gonna dress up as one of Ribera’s men and gun you down in the middle of a crowd! No!’

Sophie pouts. A full pout, with the sad mouth and the big brown doe eyes and the soft voice going ‘oh’ and Eliot buries his face in his hands with a groan. ‘Dammit, Sophie.’

‘Thanks, Eliot,’ Sophie says, casually brushing his arm as she walks away. ‘Please do try to make it look good.’

\---

Vittori is ‘winning’ and Nate has just been knocked out cold and is on his way to face Moreau. Which is another part of the plan that Eliot did not _entirely_ agree with, but Nate had assured him that it was perfectly safe.

‘Moreau, he won’t kill me outright,’ Nate said, pacing up and down the frantic room where people were shouting at each other, shouting at phones or just shouting in general. ‘He’ll want to talk first. Do a little gloating. _Then_ he’ll want to kill me, but by then it’ll be too late.’ He pauses. ‘Hopefully.’

‘ _Hopefully?’_ Eliot growled, but then Hardison cut in with some lengthy bullshit about good men and evil men and how you should always hope that the guy pointing a gun at you is an evil man because good men won’t want to gloat but just kill you outright and that is about the point where Eliot stopped listening.

He is also not listening to anything else happening over the comms right now, because he already knows what’s going on. He already knows all hell is about to break loose but he’s way too far out of position to do anything about it. And besides, he has his own job to do. The job that has him and Parker make their way down into the dungeons once again, to stop next to the steam vent.

Which is no longer welded shut.

One look at Parker’s face tells Eliot everything he did not want to know. ‘Parker…’

‘Oh hey, look,’ Parker says, eyes wide in badly faked surprise as she shines the flashlight down the vent. ‘It must have fallen open during the night. That’s a coincidence!’

‘Parker,’ Eliot says again with a heavy sigh. ‘It’s okay. Just. Be quick, okay?’

Parker is already stomach-deep into the vent. ‘Will do!’ she hollers, the sound echoing _far_ more than Eliot would have liked. ‘Whoops!’ Parker whispers. ‘Will do.’

And she disappears down the vent, a lithe black form slithering away into the scorching darkness. All that’s left for Eliot to do is wait and hope that, if all hell is about to break loose, it might be on his side for once.

_\---_

Apparently it is. The rest of the plan goes off like a dream: Parker manages not to burn alive, Flores is freed, Sophie is ‘shot’ (and goes down with a swoon that has Eliot roll his eyes behind his balaclava) and Nate wakes up and starts jabbering at Moreau, who _tries_ to sound glib in response but Eliot knows now.

It’s not a fake memory fueled by false hope. He _knows._

He knows that tone of voice.

He knows Damien is losing.

And Damien knows it too.

The dangerous prickling of hope that he has managed to squash down so far, is growing stronger and stronger by the second, too solid to be ignored by now. It takes Flores nudging his arm to realize that he is actually zoning out while listening to the showdown in the presidential office, something he is _not_ supposed to do while they are still in the middle of a wrap-up. There are still goons on the loose, both Damien’s and Ribera’s and there is still a minor but not inconceivable chance that one of them might try and go for Vittori in a last ditch effort to stop whatever the hell is going on.

He should focus. He should get the team out _now_ , because there’s no telling what will happen next.

Flores’ hand lands heavy on his shoulder. ‘Are you alright, Spencer? You have grown pale.’

‘m fine,’ Eliot manages before he moves to get up and _go._ ‘Let’s get this over with.’

He makes it ten steps down the hallway in the direction of Ribera’s office when Nate speaks up again and Eliot stops dead in his tracks.

\---

‘I have a 24 year old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority. You never stood a chance.’

Eliot does not hear Damien’s reply or anything else Nate says next. He does hear Parker’s ‘oooooh’ and Sophie muttering: ‘that’s a good line’ before she remembers she’s supposed to be dead. He turns around to see Hardison doing a premature little happy dance at the other end of the hallway and then everything goes a little hazy for a moment.

He doesn’t realize he’s actually swaying on his feet until he feels a hand on his shoulder again and Flores’ face swims into focus about two inches from his own. ‘Spencer, I really think you ought to sit down.’

Eliot doesn’t respond. Over the comms, Ribera, with the self-preservation skills of the true weathercock, oh so casually starts inquiring about the real estate prospects for retired presidents. And Nate is right: Moreau’s villa _is_ spectacular.

\---

_If there was one thing Damien could never do without, no matter how much Eliot sometimes begged him to, it was luxury._

_Over the years, Eliot moved from four star hotels to penthouses to villas and in one memorable case even to an entire medieval castle because it had attracted Damien’s attention. And it was nice, of course. The life of a hitter wasn’t all too glamorous on its own, it was nice to have a private suite where he could crash down for a couple of days, and a chef whose food did not make him want to barf. A king size bed, a spa treatment to relax his aching muscles whenever he needed to and always enough Moreau Models to keep him warm at night: Damien was living the dream and so, by extension, was Eliot._

_Even if it was a bit impractical at times._

_‘Spencer, what is this?’_

_Eliot glared at Damien, who was in turn glaring at the papers Eliot just put on his desk. ‘It’s your new hideout. For the next three months at least, until I’ve cleaned up Chapman’s latest mess.’_

_Damien’s glare intensified. ‘Spencer, I am not going to spend three months of my life in the middle of nowhere! Is there even cell reception in this place?’_

_Eliot crossed his arms and tried not to feel too much like a parent negotiating with a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. ‘Copenhagen is not the middle of nowhere, and yes. And before you ask, no, you cannot have a penthouse this time. The cops know about them, they know about your villas and mansions so that’s the first place they’ll look. Standard safe house apartment it is.’_

_Damien grumbled and growled, but this time, Eliot did not budge. ‘There’s no pool parties in jail, Damien,’ he warned, earning another death glare. ‘And I’m sure you can survive three months without Jean-Luc’s coquilles_ _à l’orange.’_

_‘Fine,’ Damien groaned. ‘But if it takes one day over three months, I’ll start docking your pay.’_

_Eliot did not need that threat. To get back to Jean-Luc’s coquilles as fast as he could, he would do a whole lot more (and a whole lot worse) than simply derailing an Interpol investigation._

_\---_

There is something in Eliot’s hand. Something soft and paper-y that wasn’t there before and when he looks down, he sees a tissue pressed neatly into his clenched fist.

He looks up again. Into the face of Parker, who has come from god knows where and who is looking at him with a displeased frown. ‘Parker, what the hell is this?’

‘You’re breathing funny,’ she tells him, as if he’s offended her somehow. ‘Like Hardison does when he watches _The Hoppit._ His face goes all weird too, just like yours. _’_ She turns to Flores, who is still hovering beside Eliot like a grizzled mother hen. ‘Did you hurt him? You said you wouldn’t hurt anybody and I will take all your money if you lied to me.’

‘How many times…’ comes Hardison’s defeated sigh over the comms. ‘Mama, calm down. Also, it’s called _The Hobbit_ and it’s _meant_ to… you know what, never mind. Eliot, you good?’

‘I’m _fine,’_ Eliot growls, scrunching up the tissue with a lot more force than necessary and chucking it to the side. He takes a steadying breath. And another. ‘Hardison, how’s the goon squad doing?’

‘All but vanquished,’ Hardison replies happily. ‘General Flores, I gotta say your men are _very_ efficient. If any of ‘em ever need a job at the other side of the pond, please let us know. We got our own little Spencer tank over there of course, but we could always…’

‘Hardison.’

‘Yeah yeah. No more goons. Goons gone. We’re good in here.’

Another deep breath. ‘Parker, how’s the tombs?’

‘All clear,’ Parker says. Eliot pretends not to notice how she is surreptitiously pulling another tissue out of her pocket. It’s not that important anyway. What is important is breathing, deeply and steadily and asking Flores: ‘Everything under control then?’

Flores smiles and gestures over the railing to the mob downstairs. ‘See for yourself, Spencer.’

Eliot looks down. In the hall of the presidential palace, Vittori has just covered Sophie’s ‘body’ with his jacket, gently brushing her hair out of her face before he stands up and addresses the crowd with tears in his eyes. Shaken but stalwart, he plays the part of the perfect tragic hero to perfection. Outside the palace, multiple white vans decked out with satellite dishes are already screeching to a halt as news crews come swooping in, ready to capture this picture for all the international community to see.

Vittori has won. Maybe not the ballots, but he has won the heart of the people and that is worth even more. There is no way Ribera is going to come back from this.

The wood of the landing creaks under his hands as a buzzing starts to fill Eliot’s ears, heavy and thunderous and almost, almost enough to drown out the sound of Damien starting to scream over the comms.

 Almost.

There is noise, so much noise filling Eliot’s brain and Damien screaming in his ear is only half of it. There’s the buzzing too and both Flores and Hardison asking him _again_ if he’s okay, all on top of the chaos downstairs, of Vittori being hijacked by camera crews and pulling a speech out of his ass, of paramedics and police and riot control forces pouring into the hall to disperse the crowd, the crowd that is screaming and sobbing and being _so loud_ that it makes Eliot want to curl up on the floor and cover his ears with his hands until it all goes away. It’s all-encompassing. It blinds him until the whole world turns into a white wall of sound and through it all he can _still_ hear Damien, pleading and desperate in a way Eliot has never heard him before.

It hurts. It hurts more than Eliot thought it would, more than that time he tried to cut the power to a mark’s house and got himself zapped for his trouble because he was young and an idiot and he thought all the damn wires were interchangeable. Hearing Damien beg and whine and cajole is like that, a shock to Eliot’s entire system that sears across his skin. Drowning out everything around him and leaving nothing but the sound of static in his ears and the bitter taste of electricity lingering in his throat.

There’s the clink of a glass being put down. For some reason, this tiny sound manages to ring through the chaos like a bell, bringing the swirling vortex around Eliot to a complete standstill.

He is standing. No. He is _leaning_ against a pillar on the mezzanine. The palace around him is still in uproar but around him, there is a weird little pocket of calm. Flores has vanished but Hardison and Parker are still hovering at the edge of his vision, worry written on their faces in large, easily readable letters.

Eliot blinks. His eyes are hot and scratchy and he knows his breathing is not as steady as he’d like it to be, but he ignores it. He ignores Parker and Hardison too, because over the comms there is the creak of an expensive leather chair, followed by Nate’s matter-of-fact voice saying: ‘… aaaaand scene. Good job, guys. We’re done here.’

‘Just in time,’ comes Sophie somewhat muffled reply. ‘Eliot, I’m positively _dying_ for that bouillabaisse you promised me.’

Eliot doesn’t hear. He also doesn’t hear Hardison’s snort and Nate’s groan. Because the moment Nate utters the word _done,_ Eliot has ripped out his earbud, turned around and booked it out of the hallway as fast as his stolen goon boots can carry him.


	5. Aftermath

The sun is setting over the hills of San Lorenzo. Late rays of sunlight slant through the streets and over the rooftops, casting everything in a final golden glow before the darkness will take over. Up on the roof of the presidential palace, the evening air is still warm but there is an icy tinge to it, a warning of the nightly chill that is to come.

Eliot can already feel the cold seeping into his skin. He vaguely supposes he should have brought a jacket before coming up here. At the very least he should move to the other side of the rooftop, where the stonework is still basking in the sunlight. Not sit still in the only shadowed corner, slumped against one of the parapets where the bricks are already rapidly losing heat.

A gust of salty wind blows past. Eliot shivers.

His jacket is in his hotel room, two blocks away from the palace grounds. It might as well have been at the other end of the earth. And according to his legs, to all his muscles really, getting up and moving to the other side of the rooftop would be a monumental effort, not unlike trying to swim across the English Channel.

No, scratch that. Eliot swam across the English Channel once. It wasn’t as big a challenge as people made it out to be.

Down in the streets, there is still the roaring and bustling of a Mediterranean town at dinnertime. From up here, it sounds like a giant hornets’ nest, an indistinct buzzing that’s nothing more than white noise. It’s the perfect echo for the buzzing that is still going on inside Eliot’s head, the buzzing that hasn’t stopped since this afternoon. Although it is occasionally interrupted by a replay of Damien screaming, gunshots ringing and Nate saying the word _done_ over and over and over and over and over, _done done done done done_ , until it all blends together in a kaleidoscope of unintelligible noise and Eliot has to forcefully shove it all down again to bring the buzzing back.

He kind of likes the buzzing. It means he doesn’t have to listen to anything else.

He is vaguely aware he shouldn’t be up here, alone. For a start, he is making a very prime target of himself for any ex-goons of Damien’s who would like to talk to him about their sudden and indefinite unemployment. But that’s not important, not really. More important is that he is leaving the team unprotected and vulnerable in the aftermath of a job, the biggest job they ever pulled and he should be down there, should be making sure that everybody got out unscathed. Should be making sure that no one got to them and not leave any of them out of his sight until they were all safely on board the plane taking them back to the States.

There’s a seagull flying by overhead. It circles a couple of times and then lands on a parapet next to Eliot, where it lets out a shriek like nails dragging down a school board.

Eliot doesn’t move.

The seagull shuffles a bit from right to left. It lets out another horrifying shriek and then takes off again, rising up until it’s just a small speck of white against the dark blue sky.

Eliot is alone again. He blinks. The sun has gone down another foot so the entire rooftop is now covered in shadow and the cold is now more than just a warning.

That’s fine, though. Cold doesn’t really bother him. He’s been colder than this before. He’s been hot too, he’s suffered both frost burn and sun burn and fire burn and he’s still here. He’ll be fine.

He’s still here. He’ll be fine.

There might be another reason he should not be up here. Perhaps he should be with his team, not to keep them safe (although he is always, always trying to keep them safe), but because they will be celebrating right now. Nate will be down at the hotel bar, asking for the most expensive whiskey they’ve got and making longwinded toasts that completely downplay how much sheer threads of luck this con was hanging on. Sophie will be sipping her wine and making eyes at Nate while also casually counting all the valuable jewelry the other hotel guests are displaying. She will be aided in that by Parker, who won’t be drinking but who will be gorging herself on a fancy cheese plate while Hardison is trying to convince the bartender to make him an orange soda cocktail.

There will be cheering and laughing and drinking and it will be the best part of the entire job. The celebration afterwards is _always_ the best part of any job and Eliot should definitely be there for it.

Not this time.

It’s not that he’s not happy. He is. He is pretty sure he is happy with how everything turned out.

It’s just that he has to work through quite a lot of other things before he can properly get to the happy part.

Another breeze gusts by, smelling of cooking and sea water. It makes Eliot’s cheeks feel cold, colder than they should be. He reaches up, touches his face and finds that his fingers come away more damp than usual.

Oh.

He reaches up again to inspect further, but stops. Because there’s footsteps on the stairs at the other end of the rooftop. A door opens and reveals a figure that is completely dark in the low light.

Eliot tenses, instincts taking over through the haze. But then the figure starts moving and he relaxes, slumping back against his very comfortable parapet.

‘Dammit Hardison.’

It comes out rough and raspy in the silence, so Eliot clears his throat and tries again. ‘ _Dammit,_ Hardison.’

‘Yeah, that didn’t sound much better,’ Hardison replies, slowly ambling over to where Eliot is sitting. ‘But I gotta say, of all the places to have an emotional crisis, this one’s got a pretty good view.’

Eliot glares. Hardison appears less than impressed; instead he lowers his stupidly tall form until he’s sitting against his own parapet a couple of feet away.

Eliot glares harder. It’s probably getting too dark now for Hardison to see, but it’s the thought that counts. ‘I’m not having an emotional crisis, Hardison.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Hardison says, followed by the fizz of what _has_ to be a bottle of orange soda. ‘And we did not just defeat your evil overlord ex-boss who you had a _very_ interesting relationship with…’ He pauses as he notices Eliot almost audibly bristling and continues: ‘… don’t give me that, I know the two of you didn’t go in for the hinky hanky panky but you were in _deep_ with this guy and some of that’s gotta stick. Whether you want to or not. So.’

He stops again and a whiff of violently artificial orange hits Eliot’s nose as Hardison takes a sip. When he doesn’t do anything else and nothing else seems to be forthcoming, as if ‘so’ is an acceptable way to end a sentence on, Eliot clears his throat again. ‘ _So_ what? Aren’t… aren’t you still pissed at me?’

He almost flinches when he hears how flimsy it sounds. Pathetic. Like the male lead in a bad chick flick trying to get back into his girlfriend’s pants with the lamest, most cliché in-the-rain-apology possible.

‘Oh, I am,’ Hardison assures him, a not-too-friendly grin blickering in the dim light. ‘Yeah. I’m still _super_ pissed at you and once we get back State-side, I’m gonna yell at you so hard you won’t be hearing anything else for weeks.’

He pauses to take another sip and looks at Eliot again. Eliot can’t tell through the haze of despair and the darkness around him, but Hardison’s expression seems to soften. Marginally. ‘But I’m also not letting you out of my sight for the time being, so it’s either me right here or Parker two rooftops over with an infrared camera. Your choice.’

‘Parker,’ Eliot mutters, letting his head lean back against the cold brick of the parapet. ‘You sure you wanna be up here instead of bein’ with Parker? You know I heard her mention somethin’ about wantin’ pretzels this morning, coulda sworn that was your thing.’

Hardison pauses for a moment and Eliot gets the distinct impression that this is new information. ‘Nah,’ Hardison says slowly after a long minute, ‘nah. She’s ah, she’s taking a tour of all the villas around here. Probably won’t be back for hours.’

Eliot makes a face. ‘I thought I told her not to go in alone,’ he says, trying not to think about the various distinctive and creative ways Damien used to secure his premises. Although he supposes that’s not really an issue anymore, but still.

‘What, you wanted to give her the private tour yourself?’ Hardison says, capping the bottle again and grinning at Eliot. ‘You wanted to show her your old bedroom, is that it?’

Eliot has already opened his mouth for a cutting reply involving the words _dammit_ and _Hardison_ at least several times, but he stops. Because all of a sudden, Hardison’s words conjure up the vision of Eliot taking Parker through Damien’s villa, pointing out everything of interest like the most basic of tourguides, _and this is where we used to map out new smuggling routes and this is where we made lists of liabilities and how we were going to dispose of them and this is the kitchen where Jean-Luc made his coquilles and his canard au beurre and this is my old room yes I know it’s a bit small watch the step…_

It’s too much. Eliot barely manages to squash the first bubble of hysterical laughter that drifts up because _not the time,_ but it’s a lost cause; the idea of him giving Parker a private tour through Damien’s house is suddenly the funniest fucking thing imaginable and he bursts out laughing, bending over double with great, heaving guffaws that leave him gasping for air. It’s like a barrier the size of the Hoover dam has finally given way and is destroying the numbness he has been wallowing in. Breaking through and replacing the empty buzzing with howls of hilarity as he clutches as his ribs, trying to keep himself in one piece even though that might be a lost cause. Somewhere, far off in the distance someone is saying ‘dude, come on. It’s not _that_ funny,’ but Eliot keeps laughing because there is nothing else he can do and he can’t stop.

His eyes are stinging and he screws them shut, burying his face into his knees to try and get some sort of control back. The hilarity is fading, slowly fading but now there is something else rising to the surface. A lot of something else that Eliot can’t give a name to but it’s every bit as strong as the laughter was. There’s no fighting it, even if he wanted to; so he clutches his ribs a little tighter, buries his face in his knees a little deeper, patently ignores the frantic and slightly panicked chattering to his left and. Lets go.

\---

_Eliot never cries. He can’t honestly remember the last time he did because his pop was of the ‘boys don’t cry’ mentality and once you’re off into the army, the horrors you see there make sure you either never cry again or you won’t be able to stop._

_And after the army?_

_Eliot never cried. The days after Beslan he hid himself away in Tblisi for over two months, but he didn’t cry._

_When Chapman discovered his new method of teaching diplomats a lesson, Eliot shrugged and told him he’d have no part in it but he didn’t shed a tear._

_When he met Toby, the man who could crack the numb shell Eliot had built around himself with a simple plate of pasta, Eliot stayed with him as long as he could before his life caught up with him again, to get as much of himself back as possible. And though Toby once told him that good food could make you weep with joy, Eliot never did._

_Because Eliot Spencer does not cry._

_Except for when he does._

\---

There’s a hand on his shoulder.

As Eliot slowly drifts back up again from the swirling vortex that surrounds him, he notices that there is a hand on his shoulder. A tiny bit of warmth searing into his skin and chasing away the chill of the now full-grown night.

There is also a warm presence to his side, a lot closer than he thought it would be. So close in fact that he only has to lean sideways, just a little, to slump against it and let Hardison take his weight for a moment.

He doesn’t.

Instead he takes a deep, shaky breath and as his surroundings become a little clearer (it’s so cold now he’s got goosebumps all over, there are more seagull shrieks in the distance as restaurants start taking out their trash and Hardison is still here which is the most unfortunate blessing imaginable), he breathes out again. Just as deeply and just a little less shakily.

He breathes in. His face is a mess of snot and tears and it has seeped through his pants, so his knees are uncomfortably damp as well.

He breathes out. Listens to Hardison because being Hardison, the man cannot be quiet even in a crisis and he has launched into some bullshit description of some stupid TV show Eliot has never heard of. ‘So I know what you’re thinking, a show about the troubled lives of the English aristocracy in the 1910s ain’t gonna be interesting but let me tell you: it’s basically what would happen if Professor McGonagall and Prime Minister Harriet Jones were sent back in time but without any magic or aliens and with a whole lot more verbal bitch slapping.’

To Eliot, this makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t have to. All he has to do is take another breath.

‘… and then Michelle Dockery, who you might remember as Susan the Granddaughter of Death in _Hogfather_ goes and does the hanky panky with a visiting dude but the dude gets a little _too_ excited if you know what I mean, by which I mean he keels over dead while they are doing the nasty. Which isn’t great and especially not if…’

‘Hardison.’

It’s barely audible. The softest rasp, uttered inside a ball of human limbs and muffled into Eliot’s knees. Unsurprisingly, Hardison is too caught up in his monologue to notice, so Eliot breathes in. Out. And tries again.

‘Hardison.’

‘… and then the valet, Mr. Bates, thinks a prosthetic leg might be a good idea but not if you’re in 1912 it’s not… did you say something?’

The pressure of the hand on Eliot’s back grows stronger, warmer as Hardison shifts closer. ‘You comin’ back to me, man? Good, good, you know you’re scaring the shit out me, right?’

Eliot swallows, forcing his muscles to relax bit by bit by bit until he finally _is_ slumped against Hardison, who takes this with a faintly surprised ‘oh, alright’.

‘Shoulda told you,’ Eliot continues, his voice coming up like gravel through a cut up throat. ‘Shoulda… shoulda told you. Not Nate. Not Sophie, Parker. But shoulda told you.’

His eyes are still half closed and the darkness surrounding them is now complete so he can’t see a thing. He can feel Hardison shift in surprise, however, and he continues: ‘’Cause of what Nate said. Nate’s right. With the genius and the smartphone and the authority problem, coulda solved this whole mess in a week if I’d only told you.’

Hardison is quiet for a long moment, the only movement he makes a surreptitious rubbing of Eliot’s shoulder blade. It feels nice. Comforting, and Eliot is way too far gone to even try and resist leaning into it.

‘Weeeellll, I wouldn’t know about that,’ Hardison eventually says slowly. ‘Wouldn’t know about that. I mean, this way, we got to steal a _country.’_

Eliot has to admit that there’s that. ‘There’s that,’ he mutters, right before he straightens up ever so slightly again, slowly lets his head fall back against the wall and just… stops. Moving.

Next to him, Hardison starts talking about the Downtons, or quite possibly the Abbeys again. Deep down below, the town is growing quiet as the lull between dinner time and party time spreads out. The seagulls have gone, to wherever it is that seagulls go at night. It’s still cold and it is going to get colder very soon, but despite his lack of layers, Eliot doesn’t shiver anymore and the goosebumps are gone.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been sitting there. He only knows that it’s long enough for Hardison to finish his monologue and pull out a tablet from god knows where so he can make a start on cleaning up the mess they’ve made. It’s also long enough for Parker to show up at some point; she appears over the edge of the roof, armed with a duffel bag and grinning like a loon before she sneaks her way over to them, puts the duffel bag down with a suspiciously heavy clang, sits down, curls up against Hardison’s other side and promptly falls asleep, judging by the soft snoring sounds that drift up into the night air almost immediately.

‘Guess she had fun,’ Hardison mutters, voice warm as he shifts a little to accommodate Parker, his tablet and also Eliot who is not slumped against him anymore, not really, but there’s no real distance to speak of between them either.

Eliot doesn't reply and after another minute of silence, Hardison goes back to his typing. The clacking of keys and Parker’s snores sound quietly across the rooftop, a soothing symphony that almost lulls Eliot to sleep as well.

The darkness, the warmth to his side, the soundtrack of clacking and snoring and the faint aroma of orange soda is enough to anchor him while he lets his mind drift and his body relax for the first time in months. It isn’t over, not quite yet: as long as Damien is alive, he will remain a threat that Eliot will have to deal with someday, be it sooner or later.

But right now, he’s safe. His team is safe. And later sounds good.

\---

_The months after he has left Damien are… odd. Word spreads quickly, and wherever he goes he is either ‘Moreau’s ex-dog’ if his clients are being friendly, or ‘Damien’s deserter’ if they aren’t. They still hire him though, so Eliot could not care less what they call him. They still hire him because Damien or no Damien, everybody knows that if you need something retrieved without delay and without question, Spencer will be your man._

_And that’s good. He’s still got his reputation and he still gets the jobs done and life isn’t bad._

_There’s just one thing that starts bugging him about three months after he left San Lorenzo, and it takes him a while to figure it out. When he does, he doesn’t know whether to laugh or groan, but there’s no denying it: he feels lonely. Untethered._

_He’s working on his own (and doing damn good work too), but he’s not part of something anymore. And never mind that the thing he used to be a part of was the world’s most expansive criminal empire; there were people there he knew, people that would greet him when he came back from a mission and laugh with him about the stupidity of old white billionaires trying to buy their own lives back._

_There was a team. Not a team he’d chose himself and he wouldn’t trust any of them as far as he could throw them, but he wasn’t working in a vacuum either._

_Now, he is on his own again. And he’s not sure he likes it._

_The nagging feeling lasts for a good two months because he doesn’t know a way to fix this. Doesn’t even know if he_ wants _to fix this because being alone might not be great, but with a team comes a whole host of other problems. Some scrapes, he can barely manage to get himself out; he doesn’t want to know what will happen if he needs to get two (or god forbid,_ four _) other people out of dodge as well._

_And then there’s the tiny detail of finding anybody willing to work with Damien’s pitbull at all. Of finding people who might be willing to look past his past and who would trust him enough to allow him on board. Eliot knows the odds of that happening are about the same as the odds he will die peacefully in his own bed at the ripe old age of ninety-four, surrounded by his weeping wife, children and grandchildren._

_He might be better off alone, in the end._

_Another month goes by before he finds himself in one of the sleazier dive bars in LA, sipping bad beer and watching a game that’s even worse when a man plonks down next to him. He’s short, stocky if not a bit overweight, with a mop of greying curls and little round glasses that keep slipping down his nose._

_Eliot glances aside and returns his gaze to the game. Takes another sip of lukewarm beer._

_‘Mr. Spencer?’ the man asks, voice trembling with nerves. ‘Are you Eliot Spencer?’_

_Eliot sighs and turns around again. ‘Who’s askin’?’_

_The man blinks, his glass tink-tink-tinking against the bar as he sets it down with a trembling hand. ‘Mr. Spencer, my name is Victor Dubenich. And I have a job for you.’_

\---

It’s only much, much later. When the sky has grown completely black and the town below them has grown completely silent, that Eliot shifts. Convinces his legs to stretch out, despite their protesting after sitting in the same position for so long. Places a hand on Hardison’s shoulder to hoist himself up, ignoring his aching muscles and then turns around to offer Hardison a hand as well.

Hardison doesn’t take it. Instead he looks to his side, where Parker is still fast asleep. ‘This might take a while,’ he says softly, looking back at Eliot with a faint smile. ‘See you back at the hotel?’

Eliot is too far gone to argue. ‘Sure,’ he rasps, his throat rusty. He starts making his way towards the door at the end of the rooftop, but turns around again. Taking in the picture of Hardison, still sitting against the parapet with his tablet casting an eerie blue glow over his dark face, and Parker, who looks far too young and innocent when she’s fast asleep.

He cracks a smile. It comes out more wan and thin than usual, but it’s a smile nonetheless. ‘And Hardison?’

‘Yeah?’ Hardison says, blinking owlishly up at Eliot over the glare of his tablet.

‘Thank you.’

Eliot doesn’t stay to see the look of surprise and shock dawn on Hardison’s face. He also doesn’t stay for a reply, for a ‘you’re welcome’ or ‘anytime, man’.

He doesn’t stay to see Hardison swallow and his face twist, almost as if it’s going to crack as he pulls his phone out of his pocket. When Eliot receives the message, he is already out of the palace and halfway down the street towards the hotel.

_Just don’t leave. Please._


	6. Closing the Curtain

Between not having an emotional crisis on the rooftop of the San Lorenzo palace, coming _down_ from not having an emotional crisis on the rooftop of the San Lorenzo palace and Hardison booking the first available flight back out of Europe and back to Boston, Eliot does not get as much sleep as he perhaps would have liked. Those ninety minutes a night? Yeah, those are fine when they have not just stolen a country and defeated one of the most notorious crime lords in the world. Right now, Eliot could have done with a normal, regular, boring eight hours of blissful unconsciousness. At least.

Unfortunately, Hardison wakes him up after only three. Not on purpose, because the man is smarter than trying to shake a sleeping Eliot Spencer by the shoulder until he wakes up. But by trying to go through his morning routine as quietly as possible and, being Hardison, failing spectacularly. After tripping over his own suitcase, Eliot’s duffel bag, the step to the bathroom, both suitcase and duffel bag _again_ and finally plonking down on the bed with a soft, downy thud, Eliot is definitely not getting back to sleep.

‘ _Dammit,_ Hardison!’ he growls, not opening his eyes yet, opting to bury himself under the covers just a little deeper instead.

The noises stop. ‘Goodmorning to you too, sunshine,’ Hardison replies, way too cheerily this early in the morning. ‘You ready to get back to hunting nice, normal white collar schmucks as well?’

There is a brief tense silence after that question, but then Eliot throws back the covers and bursts out laughing. ‘Hell. Yes.’

\---

The short night and morning grumpiness are easily dispelled by the exquisite hotel breakfast and even better coffee. And when Eliot, slightly exasperated, goes searching for Nate (because of course the man is taking a moment to sleep in, and Eliot can’t even blame him), the morning gets even better. Because there is an extra lump in Nate’s bed, and a very distinctive lump at that.

 _Fucking finally,_ Eliot wants to yell at him but gentleman that he is, he decides not to comment. Instead he gives the door post a vigorous thump, proclaims Nate a free man (and ignores the echo of _free man free man free man_ that starts up almost immediately because the thought is so big, it bears repeating a couple of times) _,_ and heads back downstairs to where Parker and Hardison are waiting in the lobby.

Correction: where Hardison is sitting on one of the miniature sofas in the lobby, with one arm wrapped loosely around Parker’s shoulders. Who is sitting normally, not perching, which is rare enough in itself, and talking quietly to Hardison who is listening with an intentness he usually reserves for hacking into secret government databases.

While talking, Parker is munching on a baggie of pretzels.

Eliot smiles, his heart doing something complicated in his chest at the sight before he retreats quietly back into the hotel hallway, a couple of steps until he has disappeared from their view.

_Fucking finally._

\---

The plane is small and looks like it’s being held together with duct tape and prayers, but Eliot doesn’t care. He doesn’t listen to Hardison’s excuses about the trip being short notice and this being the only private airline available (although technically, since the company only has the one plane, it’s more of an air dot instead of a line); he just hauls himself and his duffel bag on board, sits down and stares out of the window without seeing anything until the plane has waddled itself off of the runway and into the air.

He falls asleep again not ten minutes later.

He only wakes up again a couple of minutes before they touch down in Boston. He takes a cab to a nondescript coffee shop two blocks from his apartment, takes another cab to a dive bar ten blocks from the coffee shop, waits an hour and then finally walks himself home, using only two of his standard detours because he does not have the energy for anything more complicated.

He drags himself up the stairs, down the dim hallway where the light is still buzzing and flickering (he really should do something about that at some point), opens his front door, checks for any nasty surprises (there aren’t any) and heads straight for the shower.

The boiling hot water does not only get rid of the dank ‘I slept in my clothes for eight hours’ airplane smell, it also gets rid of the last, final tension that Eliot has been carrying with him. The realization that the job is over, the team is safe and he can look forward and walk into the future without looking over his shoulder beats down on him, clouds his vision until he’s breathing hot and damp and a little shakily before it leaves as quickly as it came, slides off his back, down his arms and legs and into the shower drain, leaving nothing but bubbles that pop into the air the moment he touches them.

He blinks, snapping back into reality. He tilts his head back under the spray and reaches up to drag a hand through his hair, trying to detangle it before he goes for the shampoo.

And stops, because his fingers reach a snag he does not recognize immediately. He shakes his head a little to try and locate the problem, then reaches up again to feel around more carefully.

Huh.

Apparently somebody used the eight hours he was asleep to sneak tiny braids into his hair. They’re invisible, carefully hidden against the nape of his neck, but still undeniably there. A brief investigation reveals at least four of them, all tied up neatly with what seem to be small pieces of dental floss.

Try as he might, Eliot cannot twist his head far enough to see the braids, not even when he uses the old two mirror trick. So after standing in front of his bathroom mirror, quietly dripping on the mat and letting his fingers twist and feel around the braids for a long time, long enough for the steam of the shower to evaporate and leave the entire bathroom cold and clammy, Eliot drags his hands through his hair again and heads back into the shower.

Without taking the braids out first.

\---

It comes as a bit of a surprise, but Nate actually agrees to lie low for a couple of months. Eliot has his doubts about whether ‘a couple of months’ will turn out as long as he would like it to be because clients and marks have a tendency to crop up whenever they are least wanted, but still. He will take any downtime he can get.

He doesn’t see Parker and Hardison for at least two weeks, and that is OK. He doesn’t know where they are, but he trusts Hardison’s spy gear abilities and Parker’s survival instincts enough to keep them both safe for a while, until things get back to normal. Heaven knows where Nate and Sophie are too, although Eliot is _very_ sure he does not want to know what they are doing. He can take a guess, and he is not going to think about that guess for too long lest he ends up any more mentally scarred than he already is.

So for a couple of weeks, Eliot has no team to keep safe. He is on his own again, but this time, it’s the good kind of alone. The tethered, quiet kind that always comes right after a job well done. A time to breathe and get his bearings. To look around at which pieces of his life are still standing and which he might need to rebuild (and all things considered, the damage from this job is surprisingly little).

A time to deep clean his apartment, starting with the kitchen cupboards. He throws out the sticky beef stock cubes, the wilting tomato plant and the unfortunate vegetables in his fridge that did not survive the week he spent in San Lorenzo. He goes to the farmers’ market and buys the ingredients to make enough fresh beef and vegetable stock to last him a year, new tomato seeds and the first squash pumpkin of the season. It’s a little early for pumpkin soup, he prefers it when it’s at least gone October, but they are there and he has nothing better to do. Soup will freeze well, anyway.

When he gets home, he fixes the light in the hallway. He re-sets all his tiny surprises for whoever might get the bright idea to try and sneak into his apartment as well, just for fun.

He boots up his computer and puts all his research of the past six months into a folder named ‘For Hardison’. He doesn’t know if it will still be useful, but Hardison still needs to see it. Even if Eliot can’t really put into words why that is.

He cooks and cleans and fixes things around the house and in general, doesn’t do anything important. It’s the ultimate definition of taking a breather and after only two weeks, Eliot already gets the distinct feeling that the world is slowly righting itself around him again.

He pauses, smiling in the pot of marinara sauce that is bubbling away on the stove. He only needs another week or so, he thinks, and he might be ready to get back out again.

\---

The next morning, he wakes up to his phone pinging with an incoming news item.

\---

_To Eliot’s surprised dismay, the Italian is waiting for them when they arrive at the San Lorenzo airport. She is leaning against the door to the gate, fidgeting with a cigarette and glaring at the unfortunate airport employee who apparently had the guts to tell her she could not smoke inside the building._

_She straightens up when she sees them, a bright smile sliding perfectly into place. ‘Buongiorno, signore Ford. And well done.’_

_‘Grazie, grazie,’ Nate replies, smiling back just as bright. ‘But, forgive me, I thought we were done with you.’_

_‘You are,’ the Italian says. ‘I just need a word with signore Spencer and then you can go free. Please.’_

_Eliot frowns, but drops his duffel to the ground and follows the Italian anyway, into a more or less private corner where she looks at him with a patient expression and one exquisitely arched eyebrow._

_‘You knew,’ Eliot says, when the Italian remains silent. ‘About me and Da… Moreau. You knew.’_

_‘Of course I did,’ the Italian says with only the hint of a smirk. ‘That was the_ other _reason I came to your team.’_

_Eliot can’t even fault her for that. ‘So what do you want with me now? Job’s done, Moreau’s done, what more do you need?’_

_‘Mister Spencer, I don’t need anything,’ the Italian says. ‘I am here to promise you that Damien Moreau will_ never _leave San Lorenzo.’_

_Eliot gives the Italian a long, long look. ‘He will never leave San Lorenzo,’ he repeats softly after several beats of silence._

_‘Take your team back home, Mister Spencer,’ the Italian says and before Eliot can think of a reply, she has slipped away and left him standing, blinking owlishly, in a cloud of stale cigarette smoke and Chanel._

_‘What was that about?’ Nate asks when Eliot rejoins the others, but Eliot shakes his head. ‘She wanted to hire me for another job,’ he lies. ‘Told her I wasn’t interested.’_

_‘Hm,’ is all Nate has to say to that. Then he looks outside, to where a plane is touching down, and goes in search of Hardison to demand why they are going home in what looks like a flying death trap._

\---

The news report wasn’t all that much. There had been a freak fire in the corridors underneath the San Lorenzo palace, claiming one life. A tragic accident, sure, but ultimately and utterly unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Unless you know better, of course.

Unless you used to orchestrate freak accidents like these yourself. And a damn good job you did too, if you say so yourself.

Unless you knew perfectly well that there was no way a janitor would ever go all the way down into the tunnels underneath the palace. To do what, mop up the rat droppings and make sure the steam vents were spotless? Sure.

Unless you knew damn well that there was only one person down there in those tunnels, whose death would be incredibly convenient to the world at large and to a couple of people specifically.

If you knew all that, then the small news report from an unimportant newspaper in a tiny country suddenly would grow a whole lot bigger.

\---

Even though it is a breakfast dish, 6am might be a little early for shakshuka. Especially in the quantities Eliot is making it now, chopping up tomatoes and onions and bell peppers and eggplants and chilies until the entire countertop is full of slaughtered vegetables, neatly heaped and waiting patiently in their own bowls until the oil in the frying pan is hot enough to start cooking.

After three tries and a muffled curse that sounds more falsetto than growl, the fire under the pan springs to life. Oil starts to sizzle and first go the garlic and chilies and the onions, the smell of them making Eliot’s eyes water even more than they already do. A few seconds later and he remembers shakshuka is nothing without a shitload of spices so he reaches for his spice rack, pulling out jars of this and that while barely reading the labels. Blindly throwing in trembling teaspoons of sumac, paprika, za’atar and harissa until the aroma from the pan is so sharp it is making him cough, the scent stinging in his throat as he picks up the bowl of bell peppers.

The peppers make their way into the pot with a faint sizzle and he reaches for the eggplants. And puts the bowl back down _very_ quickly again when he hears the knock on his door, followed by another and another until it’s the continuous rapping of someone who is _not_ going to stay outside for much longer.

‘Eliot. Eliot, open up. Eliot. Eliot. Eliot come on man, open the door. Eliot, I’m warning you I’m gonna come busting in anyway if you don’t open the door right this… oh.’

Even if he had known what to say, Eliot doesn’t have the energy to say it. Instead he stands silently in the doorway, looking at Hardison who looks a bit travel dazed, a bit fuzzy at the edges but also solidly real in a world that has, once again, been set adrift.

‘Uhm,’ Hardison says, interrupted mid-knock. ‘Hi. How’ve you been?’

Eliot shakes his head. Drags a hand across his face and then finally remembers he has to say at least _something_. ‘Hardison, if you’re finally here to let me have it then you have the worst goddamn timing in all of fucking…’ he starts, but stops again.

He stops again because it’s rather hard to get words out when you have a mouth full of slightly smelly, slightly ratty Star Trek shirt. Or when stupidly long arms grab you and pull you in so tight that you can barely breathe, although that might not be entirely Hardison’s fault.

‘I promise there’s still an epic rant coming your way,’ Hardison tells the top of Eliot’s ear, readjusting his grip slightly so Eliot has no chance of escaping even if he wanted to. ‘But you know, I’ve been keeping track of what’s happening in tiny little European countries as well. You good?’

Eliot doesn’t know how long it takes him to form a reply to that. All he knows is that he is caught up in what might very well be the first proper hug he’s had in years and it’s warm and safe and dark in there and Damien is gone, really _gone_ and the first free breath he takes in years comes out as a muffled sob.

‘I’ll take that as a no,’ Hardison murmurs somewhere in the distance, followed by: ‘Parker, you mind turning off the stove? Dude, I don’t know what you’ve been cooking but it smells like you’re trying to win a hot chili contest organized by Satan himself.’

‘’s shakshuka,’ Eliot mutters, then peels his face free from Hardison’s now significantly damper t-shirt and repeats: ‘It’s shakshuka. Got enough for both of you, if you want.’

Hardison looks down at him. ‘You tryin’ to poison yourself and us? Is that it? Hell no man, I can taste it from here and that’s not a good thing, believe me.’

‘I like it,’ a chipper voice announces from behind Eliot, and he buries his face in Hardison’s shirt again before he bursts into hysterical giggles.

‘I know you do, mama,’ he hears Hardison’s voice, filled with warmth and fondness. ‘I know you do. But do you think you can go back and see if there’s anything in there that us mere mortals could eat? ‘Cause Hot Chilies from Hell or not, I could really use some breakfast right now.’

A brief pause, followed by retreating footsteps and then: ‘There’s eggs! And tomatoes! And some sort of weird ball in the oven that I think is gonna be bread?’

Followed by a clatter and a clang that are the unmistakable sounds of Parker in a kitchen without supervision, which is more than enough to finally get Eliot out of his daze. ‘I’ll make you eggs on toast,’ he rasps, still not entirely ready to give up on the comfort of Hardison’s Star Trek shirt. ‘If you promise to do the dishes afterwards.’

‘Deal,’ Hardison says. Eliot is released and after heaving one last final soggy breath, he heads into the kitchen before Parker can get to the chocolate chips he uses for his cookies.

\---

The eggs with tomatoes on toast taste marginally better than the shakshuka would have done. (Eliot wanted to throw the shakshuka away, but Parker wrested the pan out of his hands before he could get to the trash can and scooped a healthy dollop of eye-watering dark red goop over her eggs. ‘I said I liked it!’ she said before taking a huge bite that made Hardison actually flinch).

But Hardison and Parker don’t comment on the rubbery eggs, the slightly undercooked bread or the blandness of the tomatoes. Instead they sit down at Eliot’s kitchen table, eat their breakfast while talking about the various shenanigans they have been up to in their down time (‘I thought we were supposed to be lyin’ low, Parker, breaking in to the White House and steal the President’s favorite pen is not lyin’ low!’ ‘I got bored!’) and they do, indeed, do the dishes afterwards.

And then they don’t leave.

It’s not that Eliot particularly _wants_ them to leave. He’s kind of sure he is okay with them staying, even if Hardison comments on his lack of tech around the place and even if Parker has found, disabled and re-abled all his security measures within fifteen minutes. Today of all days, now that Damien Moreau is finally dead and gone, Eliot is more than okay with not being alone for a bit.

So he lets them talk to him, even if he doesn’t respond much but they seem fine with that. He lets them run around and poke at his stuff and he even lets Hardison commandeer his laptop for a bit so that he can follow up on the breaking news out of San Lorenzo.

In fact, Eliot is more than happy to let Hardison do that. He’s not ready to dive into the details himself yet, although he supposes he has to at some point.

And then, as the day drags on and Hardison and Parker are still there, Eliot sits them down. Takes the deepest of deep breaths and then, no longer like a man facing the gallows but more like a man looking at the light at the other end of the tunnel and no longer caring whether it’s an oncoming train or the actual way out, he tells them. Everything.

Well.

Maybe not _everything._ They still don’t need to know about Beslan and they don’t need to know a lot, if any of the details. But he tells them about how it all started.

About Damien hiring him because he could cook.

About the khoresh restaurant in Iran.

About the trial period of dull, boring jobs.

About the first liability Damien told him to remove.

About how one liability was followed by another and another and another.

About how Kelly (and Hardison dug deep, but he had not made the connection between Seamus Kelly and John Keller) was already using kids long before the team decided to take him down.

About how he made Mark Vector piss his pants by whispering into his ear (and yes, Hardison had missed that too. That is the point where Eliot, for the first time, utters the word ‘sorry’. It is by no means the last time).

About Chapman and their not-so friendly rivalry.

About Flores and their long, slightly weird history.

About all the times Eliot has been to San Lorenzo. About the House and the Models and Damien’s penchant for luxury, which makes Parker snort and Hardison shake his head.

‘What is it with criminals and luxury, man? Just ‘cause you _have_ a billion dollars don’t mean you gotta flaunt it.’

Eliot rolls his eyes. ‘Hardison, you bought an apartment block and a bar just to mess with Nate.’

Hardison purses his lips, then tilts his head. ‘Fair enough.’

Eliot then tells them about Lucy the sniffer dog, which makes Parker go ‘awww,’ and Hardison laugh out loud. Patently ignoring the remark about keeping certain videos for blackmailing purposes, Eliot then continues and tells them about why he left.

About _when_ he left. About what he did afterwards for a couple of months.

About a dive bar in LA where a short, stocky, sweaty man named Victor Dubenich came to him with a job.

About how he thought he finally might have found something good, until the day they broke Nate out of prison and the Italian came.

It is at this point that Eliot gets up, stretching the stiffness out of his knees, and goes to fetch his laptop. Parker and Hardison have grown quiet again, listening to him talk with a seriousness that does not happen all that often. Outside, the sun is setting again and as Eliot returns to the kitchen table they have been sitting at all this time, there is a warning growl in his stomach to remind him he hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

‘It’s all on here,’ he says, handing the laptop to Hardison. ‘All the records I kept, all the research I did. I don’t… I don’t know if it’s still useful. Or even if it _has_ been useful at all, I don’t know. But. Just take a look and if you need to, you can take it. Anything you need to clean up loose ends.’

Hardison takes the laptop and puts it down, poking at the keyboard with a confused frown at first before his eyes grow wide. ‘Holy shit.’

He looks up, an inscrutable look in his dark eyes that Eliot does not really like. ‘Holy _shit,_ El.’

‘I know,’ Eliot says softly, not looking away. ‘I know. I’m. I’m sorry.’

For a moment, he thinks Hardison is about to explode into his long overdue rant right then and there. Fortunately (for now), Hardison’s curiosity wins out over his righteous fury and he returns to the laptop, after only glaring at Eliot for a couple of long seconds. ‘Mama, this is gonna take some time. You wanna go steal all Eliot’s money real quick while I go through whatever this is?’

‘I could,’ Parker says, chewing her lip. She’s frowning as well and Eliot feels a familiar heaviness in his stomach just by looking at it. ‘I could, but I’m hungry too. Can I just steal all his food instead?’

‘You’d still need me to cook it first, Parker,’ Eliot reminds her gently, which Parker concedes with a wrinkle in her nose that does a lot to lift the heaviness out of Eliot’s gut.

‘Oh,’ she says. Then she perks up. ‘But I _am_ hungry and you have food and you are here so will you cook?’

‘Might not be a bad idea,’ Hardison adds, still half scowling behind Eliot’s laptop. ‘Like I said. This is gonna take a while. Although if it’s gonna be Satan’s Shakshuka again, I’m gonna pass, thank you very much.’

Eliot turns towards his kitchen, which is positively gleaming after the disaster area it was this morning. Then he looks back at Hardison and Parker, and smiles.

‘You know, I don’t have a whole lot left to cook with,’ he says slowly. He pauses and his smile blossoms into a grin when a thought hits him. ‘But if you want to, you can help me get rid of a whole lot of leftovers.’


End file.
